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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Through PaintedJPanes 

And Other Poems 



NOTE 

Most of the poems in this collection have been taken 
from "The Dead Calypso," "Beyond the Requiems," 
" Cloistral Strains," and " From Crypt and Choir." 

All the unsold copies and plates of these books were 
destroyed by the great fire. 

Several long poems, and some sonnets, rondeaus, and 
Other minor forms, appear here lor the first time. 




/pf^ 



Through Painted Panes 

And Other Poems 



By 

Louis Alexander Robertson 



A. M. Robertson 

San Francisco 

1907 



>:: w J 



.0/? 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
MAY t 1907 
*- Copyrteht Entry 

CLASS r\A xxc, n6. 

'copy b. ^• 



Copyright by 

Louis Alexander Robertson 

igor 



TO 

James Duval Phelan 

AN ABLE MAN AND LOYAL CITIZEN 
I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK 

WITH THE FOLLOWING LINES 



RESURGAM 

{CHANT ROYAL) 

The cataclysmal force to which we owe 

Our glorious Gate of Gold, through which the sea 
Rushed in to clasp these shores long, long ago, 

Came once again to crown our destiny 
With such a grandeur that in sequent years 
This period of pain which now appears 

Pregnant with doubt, shall vanish as zvhen day 

Drives the foreboding dreams of night away. 
Born of the womb of Woe, where Sorrow sighs, 

Fostered by Faith, undaunted by Dismay, 
Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. 



RESURGAM 

Portentous of her lasting overthrow, 

Scarce forty fateful seconds seemed to be; 

And when the stars had faded in the glow 

Of the bright baleful after-blaze, though she 

Shed for some harrowing hours the tristful tears 

Which showed her heart was torn, the Soul that cheers 
And drives Despair forth from the creature clay. 
Glowed in her breast and did to her display 

Great stately structures soaring to the skies; 
If from our cosmic creed we do not stray, 

Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. 

Garbed with chaste Grecian beauty she shall grow; 

Her white hand holds Fortuna's fate-forged key 
To where a world's ships, speeding to and fro, 

Shall pause and pay a rich restoring fee; 
Corruption, greed, and everything that bears 
A semblance to them, every thought that sears 

The heart and seeks the conscience to betray, 

Should die ere born, lest later on Decay 
Destroy the fabric seen with Fancy's eyes. 

If we our crime-condemning laws obey. 
Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. 

When first her burning tears began to flow, 
Her sapphire surges sobbed with sympathy; 

The hosts of heaven heard their wail of woe 
And chanted a responding threnody; 

4 



RESURGAM 

The weeping waves, the mystic midnight spheres 

Dispelled her doubts and drove away her fears 
Of doomful dawns. Almighty God, are they 
Not Baal's blind and blatant priests who say 

The seismic curse was Thine? Thy Voice replies, 
" Heed not the heresy they preach and pray, 

Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise." 

Ofttimes from Shasta's cloud-kissed crest of snow. 
Soul-winged, I sail o'er river, grove, and lea 

To where I hear old Triton's trumpet blow, — 
Where from the tide the wave-wombed Deity 

Rises resplendent; zvith enraptured ears 

The Goatfoot's pure prophetic pipes she hears; 
Bacchus awaits her from the sparkling spray. 
His vine-bound brow on her white breast to lay; 

In one great hymn their voices harmotiize. 
This message doth the melody convey, — 

Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. 

ENVOY 

Thou demon Fate, that erstwhile sought to flay 
And scourge us to the death, thou canst not slay 

The faith that every future blow defies; 
Though we thy stealthy steps can never stay, 

Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

THROUGH PAINTED PANES II 

THE SONNET 12 

THE SHRINE OF SONG I3 

EURYDICE 14 

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IS 

PROSERPINA 24 

THERE 'S NOTHING LIKE THE OLD BALLADE 2$ 

ART 28 

PHRYNE : A DREAM 29 

BY WESTERN SHORES 34 

THE M^NAD 35 

HELEN 36 

PROTEAN ZEUS 37 

IN ABSENCE 38 

THE THUNDER TUNE 39 

THE CALIFORNIAN REDWOODS 47 

BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 48 

THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL 58 

HOVE-TO 61 

WHEN VIOLETS BLOOM 62 

THE UNKNOWN LOVE 63 

THE ROSE 64 

LET 'S KISS A KISS 67 

7 



CONTENTS 

EVOLUTION 68 

REMEMBER THEE ! 76 

THE TELLTALE MARKS ^^ 

THE DEVOTEE 78 

THE TEMPTRESS 80 

VACILLATION 8l 

THE DEAD CALYPSO 82 

GIVE ME THY LIPS QO 

THE DREAM pi 

THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING ! 92 

THE CRIMSONED GIFT 94 

ADIEU d'amour 95 

englamoured 96 

happy days 97 

lust's tiger teeth 98 

what ghosts are these ? 99 

the swoon 100 

victor love 102 

with cap and bells io4 

singer of the seven seas ! io5 

the tearful troth i08 

i love thee still 110 

WAIFS Ill 

TO A TREE 1X2 

GIVE A BEGGAR A HORSE AND HE 'lL GALLOP TO HELL II4 

THE CRUST OF CONTENT II6 

8 



CONTENTS 

FROM CRYPT AND CHOIR 1 17 

WE MUST SIT SILENT WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES I18 

JOB 120 

THE HIDDEN HAND 121 

LOVE ME ONCE MORE 122 

THE PROMISED PEACE I24 

TEARS 129 

JUBILATE DEO I3O 

WEARY 138 

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD I40 

THE CROSS-CROWNED CAIRN I44 

CONSOLATION I46 

THE CAVERN OF GLOOM 147 

THE VANISHED VINTAGE 151 

ATAXIA 152 

THE LOOM 159 



THROUGH PAINTED PANES 

Through painted panes a glory flows 
And over aisle and altar throws 

Soft floods of crimson, blue, and gold. 
Till silent forms, in sculpture stoled, 
Seem waking from a long repose. 

Ah, how the tinted marble glows! 
For every cheek now wears a rose, 
And each white face seems aureoled 
Through painted panes. 

These weird word-weavers who disclose 

Strange things to us in rhyme or prose. 

Who conjure up the dead and cold, 

Or Life's great varied page unfold, 

Their art is but a light that shows 

Through painted panes. 



II 



THE SONNET 

As often in some grand and ancient fane 
A devotee will kneel him down to pray 
At one familiar shrine day after day, 

And to his guardian saint his woes complain; 

There, while his fingers tell the beaded chain, 
His soul in ecstasy drifts far away, 

Till back returning with the vesper strain, 
It enters once again its home of clay. 

So in the cloistered corridors of Song 
There is one altar where I love to kneel ; 

Tho' humblest of the worshipers who throng 
Its narrow space, yet there I often steal, 

And in the Sonnet's sacred chalice pour 

My tears and prayers until I weep no more. 



12 



THE SHRINE OF SONG 

In mute amazement oft I pause before 
The portals of Song's shrine and list to those 
Whose music from its classic cloisters flows 

Adown the tide of Time forevermore. 

I see the place that no man may explore, 
Save him whose Art its life to Genius owes. 
On whose rapt lips the sacred cinder glows 

That teaches Song's sweet shibboleth and lore. 

Ah, it were heaven to enter in and kneel 
In some dim aisle, unnoticed and apart. 
With thirsting soul to drink the psalms 
that shame 
My songs to silence; then to rise and feel 
That my untutored lips had learnt the art 
That seats the singer in the House of 
Fame. 



13 



EURYDICE 

How Orpheus must have thrilled thy captive soul, 
When, facing Dis, thy freedom to obtain, 
He struck the classic chords, the master strain 

That made rocks reel and rivers backward roll! 

Hell's tortured heroes heard his harp extol 

Thy matchless worth, till they forgot their pain, 
And turned, one glimpse of thy fair face to gain, 

As after him they saw thee earthward stroll. 

Persephone sat silent while he played. 
Then whispered to her lord to set thee free; 
Dis nodded, and the heavy gates of Hell 
Swung swift and wide, while Cerberus obeyed 
The taming tune; then Orpheus turned to see 
If thou wert safe, and heard thee cry ''Farewell I" 



M 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

The lyre she loved to hear on Earth rang 
through the halls of Hell, 
The gloom became a golden dawn, the streams 
of Sorrow turned 
To rippling silver as she dropped Death's fading 
asphodel. 
Then in her tear-wet pallid cheeks Love's 
crimson roses burned. 

'Twas the harp of her husband she heard in 
the distance, 
'Twas the lute he had waked as a lover to 
woo her. 
And it called through the shades with the 
searching insistence 
Of a rapturing, rescuing summons that drew 
her 

Through the dark to where Acheron's waters 
were sobbing. 
But their sob seemed a psalm to the souls 
that were greeting, 
IS 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

And a hymn to the hearts that together were 
throbbing, 
Till they rose and went onward, his lute- 
strings entreating 

Mighty Dis for the guerdon that none had been 
granted, 
Save his Queen, who sat by him, Demeter's 
sad daughter; 
How her soul with the cry of those chords was 
enchanted! 
What a vision of Earth and of Enna they 
brought her! 

Nearer and clearer and louder and prouder 
echoed his strains, till the cries and the 
clamor 
Made by the hapless were hushed into silence, 
lost in the silver-tongued tones that re- 
sounded, — 

That rang to the roof of that palace infernal, 
till through the gloom that had grown 
to a glamour, 
i6 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

Throned 'neath a blazing and bright borealis, 
Dis he beheld with his subjects sur- 
rounded. 

He paused before the throne; 

His hand fell from the strings, 
Still trembling with the tone, 

The spell that Music flings 
Over the hardest heart; 

Yea, though it be of stone. 
The tears of Grief will start, 

If it Love's lips hath known 
And lost them as he lost 

Those of Eurydice, 
When Aristaeus crossed 

Her path upon the lea; 
When from his arms she sprang. 

Her loyal lips to save. 
But felt the serpent's fang 

And faced the wailing wave. 

No need had he to speak a single word, 
They knew his story well; 
17 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

The throb within the harpings they had heard 

Told more than tongue could tell; 
But all as deaf as to the clamoring hordes, 

Who gathered near, 
Was Dis unto the pure and peerless chords 
Zeus loved to hear, 
Until his Queen 
Did closer lean 
And whisper in his ear: — 
"By all the pledges thou hast given me. 
Give Orpheus back his bride, Eurydice." 

He looked on her and said, "Yea, for thy sake 
I'll yield me now." And thus to Orpheus spake :- 

"If thou hast in thy soul 

The courage to control 
The love that led thee hither, listen well ; 

Thy bride may follow thee 

Back to thine Arcady, 
But till both pass the lordly gates of Hell, 

Give not one backward glance 

To her, but still advance, 

i8 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

Guide her to where your glowing roses bloom; 
But if thou disobey 
My mandate, she shall stray 

Back to the home that waits her in the gloom." 

Clear as the fluted notes that Philomel 

Flymns to the midnight moon, 
Sweet as the low wave-whisper in a shell, 

Such was the silver tune 
That Orpheus conjured from his chords at first, 

To thank the Lord of Hell; 
Then from his waked, exulting lyre there burst 

An antiphonic swell 
Of melody that thro' those sunless regions rolled, 
Ere to earth's fragrant fields he and his loved 
one strolled. 

Dis listened with derision to the strain 
That thrilled his captive Queen, Persephone; 

For her it made the sombre shadows wane, — 
Charmed by its weird soul-waking witchery, 

She heard the murmur of Sicilian streams. 

And saw the sacred meadow of her dreams. 

19 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

The song that spirit unto spirit sings 
Then mingled with the music of the strings 
That Orpheus struck, Eurydice to guide 
Forth from the gloom to where her virgin vows 
were sighed. 

Sweet as the croon of the doves of Dodona, 
cooing and wooing, his harmonies called 
her, 

Moving like one in a dream she obeyed them, 
light seemed the cold lethal links that 
enthralled her; 

Far in the azure the lark whistled to her, borne 
on the breeze came the fragrance of 
flowers, 

Soon with her lover she'll couch in the clover, 
dreaming through Passion's sweet sen- 
suous hours. 

His harp sang of the bees. 
And of the warbling birds 

That nested in the trees 
Above the sleeping herds; 
20 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

Then one clear conjuring cadence crowned his 

lyre, 
And Arcady seemed near, home of her heart's 

desire. 

Lulled by his lute-strings, Hell's mighty immor- 
tals paused to behold her as onward she 
wended; 

Cerberus leaped like a lamb from his kennel, 
fawned on the lily-white hand she ex- 
tended; 

Followed her on, as she followed her lover, 
led by the lute that had ne'er known 
denial. 

Till Orpheus drew near the ponderous portals, 
looked on the sunlight, and then came 
the trial. 

Oh, how his triumphing harp-strings then 
trembled! Fair were the streams and 
the meadows that faced him. 

Where, in the first fervid faith of her girlhood, 
glowing Eurydice's white arms embraced 
him. 

21 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

Oh, what a breath of ambrosial sweetness fanned 

her fair cheek! What a halo of splendor 
Shone through the gloom on her golden corym- 

bus! How those clear chords compelled 

all things to render 
Homage to her, as when Dis was persuaded to 

give her again to the arms of her lover, 
If he could lead her, and never look backward, 

out of the gloom to their couch in the 

clover! 

The gates of Hell he gained, 
A single step remained 

To set his loved one free; 
But ere that port was passed, 
A glance he backward cast 
And saw Eurydice, 
With outstretched hands, into the darkness fade; 
Oh, what a price for that last look was paid! 

Sun, that shinest in the bluest skies that over 
Earth e'er bended. 
And ye mystic stars of midnight, and thou 
wanton, wandering moon! 



ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE 

Ye were watchers, ye were list'ners, when his 
quest for her was ended, 
Whisper to us through the ages, tell us if 
some tristful tune 
Sobbed within the strings to soothe him, or if — 
like a peal of thunder — 
Some swift harmony revengeful 'gainst the 
gates of Hell he poured? 
Was it pride, or was it passion, that impelled 
him to the blunder. 
When her heart, with love responding, broke 
to hear the crowning chord? 



as 



PROSERPINA 

Daughter of Ceres, throned within the shade 
Of Hell's black arches, ever gazing through 
The gloom to where, wet with the morning dew, 

The violet greets the sun in Enna's glade; 

Year after year it flourishes to fade, 

But thro' the mists of time thy face we view, 
As fair as when great Pluto paused to woo, 

When at thy side his foaming steeds were stayed. 

The fragrant fields of sea-girt Sicily, 

That bloomed beneath thy feet, have barren grown, 
And all the music of her streams is still ; 
The birds sit mute on every withered tree. 
With thistles now that velvet sward is sown. 
The winds that wantoned with thy hair are chill. 



24 



THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE OLD 
BALLADE 

Of all the tangled tropes that tell 

Of love, or hate, or joy, or pain, 
In sonnet, rondeau, villanelle, 

Or ode, or epic, or quatrain. 

Or any other kind of strain, 
Or light, or heavy, gay, or sad. 

To bring a boon, or balk a bane. 
There 's nothing like the old ballade. 

Its single cymbal suits me well. 

But when I sound the clanging twain, 
Then Pegasus begins to smell 

The battle, and he shakes his mane; 

No need of spur, I give him rein; 
Think ye that he 's a patient pad? 

To make him gallop for his grain 
There 's nothing like the old ballade. 

25 



there's nothing like the old ballade 

Did not rash Villon in his cell, 

Hard by the sobbing waves of Seine, 

Deaf to the dooming, dismal bell. 
And all unmindful of his chain, 
There carol forth a rare refrain 

That comes to us with glory clad? 
If rhyme could rid him of his stain. 

There 's nothing like the old ballade. 

For from his reckless lips there fell 

Such glowing gems, that Glory's fane. 
Wherein the world's immortals dwell. 

Doth many a less than he contain. 

The prude may treat him with disdain. 
She neither can detract nor add, 

For beauty did a champion gain; 
There 's nothing like the old ballade. 

The high-born maiden's heart will swell. 
And think the whispered vow inane 

Sweet as the voice of Philomel, 
When Poesy hath made it plain; 
26 



there's nothing like the old ballade 

See yonder awkward stammering swain! 
His simple song makes Chloe glad; 

When tongues are tied, and vows are vain, 
There 's nothing like the old ballade. 

The tune that Triton taught the shell, 

Sung by the surge and hurricane; 
The lute of Orpheus, 'neath whose spell 

We, like the Grecians, long have lain; 

Pan's pipes that filled the shepherd's brain 
With melody that made him mad, 

All live, so why should Villon wane? 
There 's nothing like the old ballade. 

ENVOY 

Prince! though this tantalizing skein 
Of rhyme hath less of good than bad, 

A cup to Villon let us drain, 

There 's nothing like the old ballade. 



a? 



ART 

Thou breathest on the cold insensate stone, 

And lo! it throbs with immortality; 
The canvas, with thy conjuring pigments strown, 

Glows with a beauty that will never die ; 

The deepest fountains of the heart run dry 
When o'er the trembling strings thy hand is 
thrown. 

And when we hear thy tongue's rich sorcery, 
We know not why we laugh, or weep, or moan. 

We know not why, nor do we care to know 
Where rise the waters of that mystic stream 

Which bears the spirit onward in its flow. 
Till, all unconscious of the clay, we seem 

To feel the breath of an ambrosial breeze, 

And drift with it o'er dreamy sapphire seas. 



PHRYNE 

A DREAM 

When thou wert with me in the waking hours 
Of those delirious but degrading days 
Now gone forever; or when on my breast, 
Pillowed in slumber, thy fair cheek was laid. 
Whether it was that each enchanted sense 
Was drugged so deeply with thy sorcery. 
Or whether thy warm lips in whispers low, 
Unheard by me, murmured unto my heart, 
"Why dream of me when I am by thy side?" 
I cannot say; but through those after hours — 
The sequent drowsy intervals when Love 
Languished a little ere it waked again — 
I never saw thy face come to console. 
Or mock me in my sleep as now, when I 
Turn in the dark with dream-deluded lips 
To kiss the pillow pressed by thee no more. 

29 



PHRYNE 

Sometimes as fair as Eos, when she flings 
The somhre curtains of the night apart 
To beam in beauty on a sleeping world, 
Dost thou appear to me; yea, I have felt 
The pressure and the passion of thy lips. 
And even heard them whisper as of old. 

One night I dreamt that I was one among 

A multitude of people gathered in 

The city Cecrops founded; I beheld 

A spacious place, circled with shrines and fanes, 

Ornate with chiseled treasures that were brought 

From classic shades to crown a pagan rite 

With a reflected glory of the day 

That dawned when Aphrodite trod the seas. 

In the mute language that the dreamer speaks, 
I questioned one who stood near me to learn 
The meaning of the mighty concourse there; 
He pointed to an empty pedestal 
Standing between two sculptured effigies 
Of wave-wombed Cytherea; one revealed 
A carved conceit of unimpassioned Love, 

30 



PHRYNE 

The other was a marble dream of Lust. 

Upon the right the chaste Ourania sat, 

A milk-white dove upon her whiter breast, 

And on her brow the sacred myrtle leaves. 

Upon the left Euploea stood, as when 

The Cnidian youth stole to her in the dark. 

And stained her snowy bosom with the blood 

Of lips that crushed her marble mouth in vain. 

Then mystic hymns, such as are only heard 
In the domain of an englamouring dream. 
Rolled from the opening portals of a fane 
In which a throng of priestesses appeared, 
Led by a priest; a woman with them walked, 
Hooded and masked, garbed in a purple robe 
That swept the shining tiles on which she trod 
With slow and stately step, until she came 
And paused in silence at the vacant plinth. 

Then did the priest proclaim that she was one 
In whom the best and basest elements 
Mingled together in a breast on which 
E'en Zeus himself had been content to rest. 

31 



PHRYNE 

He also told that listening host that she 

Possessed the cestus Cytherea wore, — 

The conquering charm that no man may resist; 

He said it was a flavor of the flesh 

Found only in a few, and only when 

Some face, some form, and, it may be, some voice 

Combine with it to kindle in the blood 

The rabies of a desperate desire. 

He said, as well, she loved to worship in 

Pandemos' shrine, then wander forth to give 

The sailormen of Salamis her lips. 

Then turning from that eager throng to her, 
And pointing to the plinth, he said, "Ascend, 
Let us behold the breathing beauty which 
In after ages man shall turn to see. 
But through the dim deluding mists of time. 
For thou art one of those who have the power 
To prompt the chisel and the brush and pen, 
And gain an undeserved but deathless fame." 

Still masked and robed, she in an instant scaled 
The waiting pedestal, where she remained 

32 



PHRYNE 

A mystery for a moment, but no more; 
For, at a sign, the robe fell from her form, 
The hood dropped ofY, the mask was flung aside. 
And Phryne stood in faultless beauty there. 

The marble miracle of Phidias, 
The chaste Ourania, seemed to shrink away; 
The people cried with an applauding voice, — 
"Euploea! O Euplcea!" For they saw 
In Phryne's form the living counterpart 
Of one whose Parian beauty never paled, 
Until it met its breathing prototype. 
The matchless mistress of Praxiteles. 

Then silence followed; as I looked on her, 

Methought I saw a likeness unto thee. 

And cried thy name aloud; a thousand tongues 

Chorused my cry and claimed thee as their own ; 

Then in the clamor I awoke to find 

The dream as fleeting as thy faithless love. 



33 



BY WESTERN SHORES 

By Western Shores oft Triton blows 
His sounding shell, and she who rose 
All wet and wanton from the deep, 
To make man's pulse with passion leap. 
Here on the wave in beauty glows. 

A herd upon the hillside lows, 
And where yon stream in music flows. 
There Pan is piping to his sheep, 

By Western Shores. 

Here vine-crown'd Bacchus doth repose. 
And nymphs and satyrs, like to those 

Of Tempe, from the copses peep. 

Why for the fabled Lotus weep. 
When near the Poppy we may doze 

By Western Shores? 



34 



THE MiENAD 

Why call this fiction in thy face a blush, 

When that pure protest faded years ago? 
This is the fervid and precursive flush 

That makes the Maenad's cheek with crimson 
glow,— 

The rosy herald Passion sends to show 
That I the ripe grapes of thy lips may crush. 
Till thro' my veins more rapturing transports rush, 

Than from the richest sun-kissed clusters flow. 

Love's chalice, garlanded with myrtle leaves, 
Is sweet to sip, but when Desire hath grown 
Drunk with the purple poppy-seeded wine 
Thy passion offers, then thy sorcery weaves 
The spell by Circe o'er Ulysses thrown, 
The charm that changed his comrades into 
swine. 



35 



HELEN 

These are the eyes in which proud Paris gazed, 
When fast across the dark iEgean sea 
He fled with Helen on the night when she 

Left Sparta's shore, and Menelaus raised 

The rescuing cry; then War's red beacon blazed, 
While Greece with all her glorious chivalry 
Dashed 'gainst the dauntless Dardan hosts to 
free 

The fair and faithless woman Homer praised. 

Virtue hath rarely worn Fame's glittering crown ; 
Where are the women of the past who reigned 
In spotless robes? Penelope, Lucrece, — 
Ah, God! how few! But Helen's glorious gown 
Defies the dust of ages, and though stained 
With Passion's grapes, gives glamour unto 
Greece. 



PROTEAN ZEUS 

Into a Satyr did the God degrade 

Himself to clasp Antiope an hour; 

Then, as a Bull he figured, to deflower 
Europa, deemed Phoenicia's fairest maid. 
Amphitryon's part he with Alcmena played; 

To Danae he seemed a Golden Shower; 
In Dian's form Callisto he betrayed, 

And as a Flame entered ^gina's bower. 

Once where Eurotas' murmuring waters flow, 
A frightened Swan sought Leda's sheltering 
breast; 

In his warm plumage, whiter than the snow, 
The crimson roses of her cheeks she pressed; 

From that immortal mingling Helen came, 

Whose beauty set the Trojan towers aflame. 



37 



IN ABSENCE 

I SIT with Pan beneath Arcadian trees 

And see the satyr and the nymph and faun ; 

I look on dazzling Aphrodite drawn 
fiy dolphins over shining sapphire seas; 
I hear the tune of Triton in the breeze, 

Sad Philomel at night, the lark at dawn, 
But little power have they to appease 

My passion and my pain when thou art gone. 

Yea, e'en the paths of Poesy seem bare 
Of all their beauty, for I fail to find 

In them the flowers whose fragrance once 
could fling 
A spell around me that defied despair. 

That made me deaf to Love, to Passion blind, 
But little consolation now they bring. 



38 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

There was music mingling with the thunder 
when the lightnings o'er Olympus flashed, 

And the gods who slumbered 'round their 
Master waked and heard the harmony that 
crashed 

From the clouds that later hung o'er Ilion, and 
the dirge of her destruction roared, 

When her thronging hosts with those of Hellas 
for the beauty of a woman warred. 

There was music mingling with the thunder, but 

it was the music of a dream, 
And, perchance, had passed away in silence, lost 

forever, but by Meles' stream 

There was born a child around whose cradle 
all the Muses met, to whom they brought 

From Latona's son a silver-chorded harp to 
which in after years he taught 

39 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

The melodious and majestic measure, which a 
world with rapture ever hears, 

For the dreaming soul of sightless Homer saw 
the vision that to few appears. 

Heard the music mingling with the thunder, and 
the paean of the cloud-throned choir, 

Caught the meaning of the clamoring chorus, 
taught it to his ever-living lyre. 

Few, as he, controlled the chords that summon 
back again the dust-dimmed days of old; 

Few e'er decked the dead in richer raiment, 
turned their faded garments into gold. 

Then within the clouds the music slumbered, 
near a thousand years it silent slept. 

Till the graceful melodist of Mantua waked and 
struck the strings that Homer swept. 

Then again we saw the calm iEgean ripple into 
rapture as his lyre 

Sent its silver strains across the waters, crim- 
soned with the red reflected fire 
40 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

Of the flaming falling towers of Ilion, ere 

^neas unto Carthage came, 
Where for him the love-defeated Dido gave her 

faultless body to the flame. 

Then there came a seeming endless silence, 
gleamings of the lightning, but no more, 

Till the lean-lipped melancholy Tuscan, wan- 
dering exiled by an alien shore. 

Dreaming of old Portanari's daughter, saw the 

levin leap across the skies. 
Heard the deafening thunder tune that followed, 

saw the Mantuan's guiding shade arise; 

Trod with him the circling scenes of Torture, 
heard Hell's captives curse in frost and 
flame, 

Garbed the spectres with a ghastly glory, shrined 
them in an everlasting fame. 

Then the sleeping thunder-freighted fleeces 
drifted North and over Stratford's stream. 

Hovered there in silence for a season, ere they 
flashed the great prophetic gleam 

41 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

That foretold a measure more melodic than the 
dirge that Dante heard in Hell, 

Or the verse that Virgil made iEneas, or the 
hymn that Homer sang so well. 

Little had he of the graceful Latin, less, or 
nothing, of the grander Greek, 

But his soul had listened to the sermons that the 
stones, the brooks, the breezes speak; 

Nature's mystic voice for him grew vibrant, in 
its tones her mother tongue he heard, 

Then she gave him his unclouded crystals, made 
him master of the wizard word. 

Through his clear uncompromising lenses Life 

is seen denuded, undisguised; 
In the glowing spectrum of his genius all its 

tints and tones are analyzed. 

Pictured on his panoramic pages, strange im- 
perishable scenes appear; 

Through the gamut of his glorious music, won- 
drous cries and cadences we hear. 
42 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

In his songs the shrieking Saxon saga mingles 

with the matin of the lark, 
And the midnight plaint of Philomela lends a 

golden glory to the dark. 

'Neath didactic Touchstone's masking motley, 
'neath the 'guising garb of Rosalind, 

All the lore of Life and Love is hidden, all 
their foibles and their faiths we find; 

Never had a King a better kingdom than the 
banished Duke in Arden found; 

Little mourned he for his stolen sceptre, when 
he heard those leafy lanes resound 

With the voices of his comrades chanting that 
Fate's quiver holds no hurtling dart 

That may not be blunted, bent, and broken 
'gainst the shield of a contented heart. 

Hark! here comes the prince of pot-house 
heroes; watch the vine-born valor, wit, and 
craft 

Rise and break like bubbles on the surface of 
the seas of sack which he has quaffed; 

43 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

O'er that tide he sailed with well-trimmed 
canvas, every breeze that blew was fair 
for him, 

And, with Hamlet, Shylock, and Othello, Fal- 
staff hath a fame Time cannot dim. 

Hear the protest 'gainst the quick quietus, when 
the demon whispered to the Dane, 

And then listen to the larger logic of the fervent 
phrases that contain 

Such a creed, that Death's loud sudden sum- 
mons, or his faint procrastinated call. 

Wakes no fear in those who face the darkness 
with the words "The readiness is all!" 

Woven with the figments of his fancy, 'mongst 

the many fibres there is one 
Which a woman's white ambitious fingers to a 

cord of cruel crimson spun; 

This she threaded to Fate's flying shuttle, where 
it blent with paler woofs and warps, 

Till upon the loom the longed-for fabric faded 
to the graveclothes of a corpse. 

44 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

She had hoped to wear the royal raiment, as the 
witches' wizened lips had vowed, 

But Revenge and swift-winged Retribution 
changed the promised purple to a shroud. 

For the phantom dagger found the fingers of 
the faithless Lord of Dunsinane, 

And the Wood of Birnam proved its portent 
when the King was murdered by the Thane. 

Hear the lonely lips of Mariana sigh for those 

that sweetly were forsworn, 
Listen to her lute-strings as they tremble, learn 

the deathless lyric that was born 

Of a love that faced the darkling distance, as a 

Rose a lofty Star will woo, 
Till it falls into her fragrant bosom, mirrored 

in a drop of midnight dew. 

All his airy nothings are eternal ; when, in after 

ages, naught remains 
Of Earth's proudest piles and fairest fabrics, 

not a vestige of her vanished fanes, — 

45 



THE THUNDER TUNE 

When her sacred moss-grown shrines surrender 
unto Time, who ever on them glowers, 

Man shall see Titania in the moonlight, crown 
the Weaver with unfading flowers. 



46 



THE CALIFORNIAN REDWOODS 

Ere over Nilus' waking wave the strain 

Of Memnon's morning melody was blown; 

Ere Cheops from his quarries clove the stone 
And piled his pyramid on Egypt's plain; 
And later, ere the God-projected fane 

Of Solomon had into grandeur grown; 

Before the glory of the Greek was known, 
Or Romulus the she-wolf's dugs did drain: — 

We stood in youth where now in age we stand, 
Colossal types of life that closer climb 
To clasp the stars than any living thing. 
Ye cherish crumbling temples that were planned 
In Dian's day, yet deem it not a crime 
Our older glory in the dust to fling. 



47 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

Not in cataclysmal chaos, earthquake, fire, or 

flood, or blast, 
Waits the world to hear the summons calling 

her to death at last. 

Oft she hears a muttered menace, sees the 

ghastly lightnings gleam. 
And the slumbering volcano vomit forth its 

lethal stream; 

Oft she sees the wind-whipped waters leaping 

to the sullen skies, 
And the foaming tidal terror in its deadly 

might arise; 

But still deaf to all the dirges that have rolled 

above her dead. 
And the songs that stir the living, she has ever 

onward sped, 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

As when first, a vagrant vapor, thrown from 

off the glowing breast 
Of her mighty parent planet, up the shining 

path she pressed, 

Lifeless, nebulous, and naked, save the vesture 

that was drawn 
'Round her like a misty mantle, as she speeded 

to the dawn. 

Who can guess the force that flung her out 

upon the star-strewn deep 
Clasped her cloudy cincture 'round her, 

taught her how her course to keep 

Through the vast uncharted regions, orbed 
her, shaped her, 'round her flung 

Icy bands and frozen fetters that for aeons to 
her clung? 

Long she drifted through the darkness, but at 
last the Word was heard, 

And the cold, insensate sleeper to the waken- 
ing message stirred; 

49 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

Felt the quickening breath that melted frozen 

field and moor and main, 
Drank the draught of saving sunlight, lost the 

winter-woven chain; 

Grew in grandeur and in beauty, soaring to 

the noonday height, 
Till the mighty Hand that hurled her out 

upon the cosmic night 

Draws her back to death and darkness, shrouds 

her in her ice once more. 
Stripped of all her garnered glory, all her 

Science, Song, and Lore. 

There shall be no eye to see it. Life shall long 

have left the earth. 
When she reels, a dying planet, to the breast 

that gave her birth. 

All our knowledge is as nothing; clear-eyed 

Reason stands aghast, 
For she sees the light that led us through the 

dark and distant past 
50 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

Lost within the larger lustre Science sheds 
upon Earth's doom, 

Is it better than the glow-worm that we fol- 
lowed in the gloom? 

While Earth speeds to where unnumbered 
sister stars are frozen spheres, 

Faith, before her falling altars, lifts her fear- 
less face and hears 

Every cherished creed derided, but still mum- 
bles to her beads, 

Dreaming that beyond the requiems deathless 
life to death succeeds. 

Hope's pale star still smiles to soothe us, dis- 
tant, indistinct, and cold. 

As the primal moth beheld it, do we now its 
beams behold? 

Are we nearer than the nascent life that slum- 
bered in the slime. 

When the protoplasmic moner scanned the 
steeps that it must climb? 
51 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

Or the microcosmic atom, ere its fetters left 

it free? 
Or the blind bathybius sleeping at the bottom 

of the sea? 

Yea, the germ, primordial, potent, saw the 

goal that it must gain, 
Found a hovel in man's body, built a palace 

in his brain. 

And the selfsame seeds that wakened with it 

in Earth's virgin womb 
Fill the fields with fragrant blossoms, or in 

poisoned petals bloom; 

Make the wilderness grow vocal with the 

voice of bird and brute, 
Send the great Sequoia skyward, gnaw in 

cankers at its root; 

Never swerving from the settled purpose of 

the primal plan. 
Save when planted in the passions and the 

burning brain of man; 
52 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

There, oft glorious, often ghastly, oft de- 
graded, oft divine. 

Sometimes soaring to the stars, and sometimes 
wallowing with the swine ; 

Always out of tune with Nature; is the human 
brute the best, 

Fated to the thralling thirst that burns for- 
ever in his breast. 

Which hath ever urged us onward o'er Life's 

sterile sands, till we, 
Rich in knowledge, rich in wisdom, panting 

forward, ever see 

Silent and untrodden regions, over which the 

mirage beams. 
But its tempting trees and waters murmur 

only in our dreams? 

They have murmured unto myriads and be- 
guiled them in the past, 

They will call through coming ages, long as 
life on earth shall last, 

S3 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

When she hurries through the spaces on to 

where the peril hides, 
As some bark on her own bosom sails through 

tranquil tropic tides, 

Freighted full with costly treasures, till some 

stealthy stream or breeze 
Woos her from the summer waters into dark 

and winter seas, 

Where the icy currents clasp her, and the 

frozen vapors turn 
Into cerements of silver, shrouding her from 

stem to stern. 

Galley slaves were ne'er chained closer than 
her captive crew, whose doom 

Is to drift to death through darkness, fettered 
to their floating tomb; 

Crouching in the cold and shrinking from 

their dreaded end they gaze 
On ffome spectre sail that mocks them as it 

passes in the haze. 

54 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

So the life that lingers latest on this planet 

still will yearn 
For the peace the world denies it, yea, though 

it again return 

To the lowest type that sheltered in its breast 

Hope's latent spark. 
And then fanned it to the fatuous flame that 

lures us through the dark. 

All our philosophic pedants, all our sons of 

Science know 
Not a whit more than that dullard dreamed 

unnumbered years ago, 

As to where the spirit wanders when the body 

sinks in death, 
For beyond the grave's black portals never 

man has breathed one breath. 

We have probed the past and hunted in its 

deepest, darkest cells, 
But the secret still eludes us, never by one 

whisper tells 

55 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

Where Life felt its first faint tremor, for it 

was not born of naught, 
Never seed spontaneous blossoms till the 

quickening breath be brought. 

As we know not the beginning, so we may not 

know the end, 
But as life from life first started, back, through 

death, to life 'twill wend. 

Now and then some guide arises who would 

turn us from our path 
With sweet promises that please us, or with 

threats of future wrath. 

We have listened to His lessons, heard the 

Nazarene's behest, 
"Follow Me, my way-worn children, I alone 

can give ye rest." 

We have wondered as we hearkened unto 

Buddha's pleading voice. 
If to find the peace men long for, they could 

make a wiser choice. 
s6 



BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 

We have seen the swarthy Arab step athwart 
our path and say, 

"Ye shall drink the living waters, if my pre- 
cepts ye obey." 

We have searched the stars above us for the 

secret, but no beam 
Lights our darkened path to guide us to the 

goal of which we dream. 

Little hope or help is hidden in the garners 

of the past, 
All its poets, priests, and sages, all the wisdom 

which they massed, 

AH its fables, faiths, and fictions, all its tem- 
ples, triumphs, tomes 

Tell us nothing of the region where the flesh- 
freed spirit roams. 



57 



THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK 
IS ALL 

This world is but a noisy show, 

A mighty, motley masquerade, 
Where countless actors come and go, 

A tragedy and gasconade, 

Where many puzzling parts are played; 
Till curtained with Death's dusty pall. 

And in Time's testing balance weighed, 
The man is nothing, the work is all. 

Forward they press, both high and low. 

And rich and poor, and gay and staid; 
Some climb where Fame's fair mountains glow, 

While others grovel in the glade; 

But when at last the sexton's spade 
Hath built the bed to which they crawl. 

When requiems roll and prayers are prayed. 
The man is nothing, the work is all. 

s8 



THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL 

Though rivers red as crimson flow 

Beneath the shot-torn barricade; 
Though on the clay of fallen foe 

Thrones have been reared with reeking blade, 

Yet when some tyrant hath betrayed 
His trust, our freedom to enthrall. 

War's waking cry should be obeyed, 
The man is nothing, the work is all. 

Fate's shuttle flashes to and fro, 

And many curious webs are made; 
Oft Fortune doth her smile bestow 

To light some dullard through the shade; 

While Genius, jilted by the jade, 
Hears in the gloom Fame's clarion call, 

"Toil on! toil on! be not afraid, — 
The man is nothing, the work is all." 

Through scenes of sin and ways of woe 
Some reckless sons of Song have strayed. 

Villon and Burns, Verlaine and Poe, 
And Wilde, her latest renegade, 

59 



THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL 

With others whom the Fates have flayed, 
Who to the dregs drained Sorrow's gall, 

Wear the fair leaves that never fade; 
The man is nothing, the work is all. 

To some misleading guides we owe 
Lights that have made us retrograde; 

While others up Time's ramparts throw 
For us a shining escalade, 
By which we may at last invade 

Truth's glorious and eternal hall ; 
Or fair, or foul, in Life's crusade, 

The man is nothing, the work is all. 

ENVOY 

Whene'er we glory or upbraid 
The good or bad, the great or small. 

This maxim may our judgment aid, 
The man is nothing, the work is all. 



60 



HOVE -TO 

Baffled^ but bravely, like a stag at bay, 
She faced the driving gale and angry sea; 
Under short canvas and with helm a-lee, 

Hove-to, upon the starboard tack she lay 

And looked into the wind's wild eye that day. 
Over the great green rolling billows she 
Rode like a storm-bird, and did seem to be 

A mist-born phantom rising from the spray. 

Her tightened weather-shrouds rang like a 
lyre. 
Struck by the furious Storm-king as he 
passed; 
Wild ocean wraiths wailed in the thundering 
choir, 
A thousand demons shrieked in every blast; 
Yet better thus to battle with the gale. 
Than drift o'er sleeping seas with listless sail. 



6i 



WHEN VIOLETS BLOOM 

When violets bloom, 't is when the year 
Wakes from her winter dream to hear 
Spring's cradle-song crooned by the gale 
O'er meadow, mountain, moor, and dale, 
That these pure purples first appear. 

Then Summer's daughters come, who wear 
More gorgeous robes, but they are mere 
Maids to the modest Queen we hail 
When violets bloom. 

Then hosts of fragrant followers rear 
Their sun-kissed crests of beauty ere 
The frosts of Winter fall, but fail 
To make these virgins of the vale 
Forgotten by the hearts they cheer 

When violets bloom. 



62 



THE UNKNOWN LOVE 

As in the City of the Violet Crown 

An altar to the Unknown God was raised 

Midst shrines of beauty that a world 

amazed, 

And even now in crumbling grandeur frown; 

For well the fine Hellenic hand could gown 

The stone with glory; but while strangers 

praised 
The peerless piles, the Greek upon them 
gazed 
Unmoved by all their beauty and renown. 

For every sense was sated, and he yearned 
For more than soulless marble could contain, 
Then did his vague idolatry disown; 
So I on Passion's altars long have burned 
The incense of my soul, but all in vain, — 
The love I dream of I have never known. 



63 



THE ROSE 

When to my lips this rose I pressed, 

Life with new beauty seemed to glow. 
A love that slumbered in my breast, 
When to my lips this rose I pressed. 
Leaped back to life, and I confessed 

The pledge I gave thee long ago. 
When to my lips this rose I pressed. 
Life with new beauty seemed to glow. 

When first our fervid troth was told, 

I gave it to thee with a vow. 
Shall I forget that night of old, 
When first our fervid troth was told, 
And when I swore that it should hold 
Me true to thee? It holds me now. 
When first our fervid troth was told, 
I gave it to thee with a vow. 
64 



THE ROSE 

And now it comes in after years, 
Its scent and color gone with age, 

Wet with Faith's timid, trustful tears. 

And now it comes in after years. 

And cries aloud to Love that hears 
And hastens to redeem the gage. 

And now it comes in after years. 
Its scent and color gone with age. 

And back to where I met thee first 

This faded flower my memory bears; 
All doubts of thee it hath dispersed. 
And back to where I met thee first 
I speed with every sense athirst, 

My soul the sacred summons hears, 
And back to where I met thee first 
This faded flower my memory bears. 

I see the love-light in thine eyes, 

I listen to thy murmurs low, 
I drink the rapture of thy sighs; 
I see the love-light in thine eyes, 
65 



THE ROSE 

And oh! I see the tears that rise, 

And curse the fate that made them flow. 

I see the love-light in thine eyes, 
And listen to thy murmurs low. 

The lips I loved may now be pale, 
But what is that, dear one, to me? 

Time's touch will make the fairest fail. 

The lips I loved may now be pale. 

But through the gloom I hear them wail. 
And haste across the years to thee. 

The lips I loved may now be pale. 
But what is that, dear one, to me? 



66 



LET'S KISS A KISS 

Let 's kiss a kiss and vow a vow 

And lightly laugh at far-off years; 
Ere yet beneath their weight we bow, 
Let 's kiss a kiss and vow a vow 
That age shall find us then as now, 

Linked by a love that never fears. 
Let 's kiss a kiss and vow a vow 
And lightly laugh at far-off years. 



67 



EVOLUTION 

Mystical Dream of Creation! 
Problem of Dark Evolution! 
Tell us the world's early story, 
Life's hidden secret unfold. 
Vain is each wild speculation, 
Groping in gloom for solution, 

Enough that from darkness sprang glory, 
Sunrise in crimson and gold. 

Mounting the stream of the ages, 
Up to its sources of mystery, 
Threading its channels uncertain. 
What after all have we won? 
Blank were the world's early pages, 
Buried in myth was its history. 
Long after Earth's misty curtain 
Glowed with the light of the sun. 
68 



EVOLUTION 

Still in the quarried tradition, 
Still in the ice-graven story, 
Still in the rock-written fable. 
Linger the throes of thy birth; 
Marking thy growth and transition, 
Back in the centuries hoary, 
Legends that teach and enable 
Thy children to know thee, O Earth! 

Nebulous waif of obscurity. 

On through immensity stealing. 
Wandering child of the forces. 
Dropped from the matrix of night! 
Fashioning thyself to maturity. 
Sphering and fusing, annealing. 
Through the dark centuries' courses 
Drifting along to the light. 

Chaos all order confounding. 
Yet ever silently speeding 
On with instinctive elusion, 
Steadily holding thy way; 
69 



EVOLUTION 

Darkness primeval abounding, 

Down through the aeons unheeding, 
Ever mid murky confusion 
Blundering on to the day. 

Thundered a mandate through heaven, 
"Let there be light!" and the vapors, 
Losing themselves in the ocean. 
Mingled again with the deep. 
Then followed morning and even, 
Night lit her pale distant tapers, 
Order was born of commotion, 
Earth was awakened from sleep. 

Laboring in primal gestation. 
Life in its forms multifarious, 
Eager to meet the sun's kisses. 
Leaped in her womb with delight; 
Weary of long nidulation. 

Up from their wallows lutarious. 
Up from their darksome abysses 

Swarmed the strange brood of the night. 

70 



EVOLUTION 

Life in fantastic variety, 

Breeding and battling and dying, 
Struggling for very existence. 

Rending with fang and with nail; 
Death, never gorged with satiety, 
Over the massacre flying. 

Blind to the light in the distance. 
Deaf to the song in the gale. 

Type against type for survival 

Through the long ages contending, 
All for supremacy striving, 
Man as the master they own; 
Brute of the brutes without rival, 
Up from the conflict ascending. 
Scheming, coercing, contriving. 
Building the steps to his throne. 

Fatuous child of mortality, 
Swaddled in dark superstition, 
Groping thy way through obscurity, 
Stumbling, but stumbling to rise; 
71 



EVOLUTION 

Casting aside animality, 

Girding thyself with ambition, 
Fearlessly facing futurity, 

Scaling the steeps of the skies. 

Race against race for dominion, 

Creed against creed for conviction. 
Throne against throne for subversion, 
Moving like puppets at play; 
Battling to force an opinion, 
Bleeding to follow a fiction, 
Dying, with instant reversion. 
To mingle again in the fray. 

Many a crimson libation, 
Poured on barbarian altars, 
Freer and faster than water, 

Purples thy triumph with shame; 
Many a lurid oblation. 

Smoking to priest-prated psalters, 
Many a monster of slaughter 
Fiddling a kingdom to flame. 

12 



EVOLUTION 

Many a Moloch of cruelty, 
Many a Tophet infernal, 
Hope, after gory baptism. 
Flung to the funeral pyre; 
But with death-scorning credulity, 
Pluming its pinions eternal. 
Up from the murderous abysm 

Springing, like phoenix, from fire. 

Dross of the brute disappearing. 
Lost in the burning purgation. 
Leaving the spirit less weighted. 
Less overburdened with clay; 
On to the light ever faring, 
Toiling in endless gradation. 
Lower to higher translated. 
Rising from darkness to day. 

Many a sacred Thermopylae 
Hurling defiance at slavery, 
Many a crucified martyr 
Dying for love of his kind. 

73 



EVOLUTION 

Tyranny, kingcraft, monopoly, 
Yielding to justice and bravery; 
Liberty's blood-blazoned charter 
Many a despot hath signed. 

Many a conquest of Science, 
Shaming the warrior's sabre; 
Many a triumph of morals, 
Wisdom and Mercy and Love. 
Many a blade of defiance 

Forged to the ploughshare of Labor; 
Many a chaplet of laurels 
Wreathed with the olive above. 

Height after height hast thou taken, 

Yet there are others remaining, 

Far in the pure empyrean 

Truth's shining battlements rise; 
Scale them with courage unshaken. 
Death and disaster disdaining. 
Storm them with jubilant paean, 
Capture the gates of the skies. 

74 



EVOLUTION 

Then shall all ills of mortality 
Unto thy wisdom surrender; 

Knowledge supreme and supernal, 
Leaving no summit to scale. 
Truth, in her white-robed reality. 
Opening her portals of splendor, 
Yielding her treasures eternal. 
Lifting Obscurity's veil. 



7S 



REMEMBER THEEl 

Remember thee! The earliest morning beam 

That breaks my slumber brings thee back to me. 

Then through the long and lonely day I see 
Thy haunting beauty, and my soul doth dream 
Of blissful bygone raptures that redeem 

These tristful moods and keep me true to thee. 

Then, in the dark, I kneel and pray to be 
Blessed with thy passion, peerless and supreme. 

Remember thee! Recall the midnight hours — 

The glorious gloom — in which we found the way. 

Thro' sensuous shades, to where our spirits met 

And breathed the fragrance of the purple flowers 

Which Passion gives his favored ones who stray 

Where we have strolled, then ask if I forget. 



76 



THE TELLTALE MARKS 

I DREAMT one night that I beheld thee dead; 

The Spoiler scarce had stolen thy breath away, 

When I bent over thy beloved clay, 
Speechless and tearless, with a nameless dread. 
For all thy pallid flesh, from heel to head. 

Passion's empurpled lip-prints did display; 

Unnumbered ghosts of bygone loves were they; 
Thy pale lips moved, and this is what they said: — 

"Thou didst believe me true, but my false heart 
Was traitor to thee, and I did conceal 

My shame for many years; but now my art 
Availeth not; these telltale marks reveal. 

Each one, a guilty love — " *'No morel" I cried. 

And woke to find thee sleeping at my side. 



77 



THE DEVOTEE 

Thou art no saint, but when I feel 

Thy blessed lips on mine, 
In adoration I could kneel 

And own thee half divine. 
A glory crowns thy golden hair, 

And lights thy loving eyes. 
Daughter of Earth! thou art as fair 

As those who tread the skies. 

And when in my enraptured ears 

Thy murmuring accents flow, 
I think some spirit of the spheres 

Hath wandered here below. 
For angel lips alone could move 

In melody so sweet; 
Child of the Skies! behold thy love 

A suppliant at thy feet. 
78 



THE DEVOTEE 

Time's rude, unsparing hand will chase 

Thy loveliness away; 
But there 's a nobler, loftier grace 

That triumphs o'er decay; 
The heart that never once betrayed, 

That changing years have tried. 
When all thy other beauties fade, 

Shall draw me to thy side. 



79 



THE TEMPTRESS 

Belike thou art a temptress come from hell, 

The devil often dons a fair disguise; 

And yet I like the laughter in thine eyes, 
And for thy lips, — I love them wondrous w^ell; 
They oft remind me of an ocean shell, 

With all its murmuring melody of sighs, 
Till I forget, when captive to their spell, 

The whispered music may be naught but lies. 

Nay, nay I I do thee wrong; have I not felt 
The rosy rebels into sweetness melt, 

And seen thee swoon within my close caress? 
What matter if thy lips the word withhold, — 
In the mute music of thy pulses bold 

Thy love grows voluble and doth confess. 



80 



VACILLATION 

The blessing and the curse alternate rise; 
One day I swear that thou art fairer far 
Than the chaste beauty of yon silver star 

That nightly hangs her lamp in western skies. 

The next I look on thee with other eyes, 
Thy beauty hath all vanished and thou art 
Foul as a leper, and thy traitor heart 

Seems but a sink of craftiness and lies. 

One day, with many a passion-prompted vow, 
I braid Love's votive blossoms in thy hair; 

The next I tear the tribute from thy brow 
And crown thee with the curses of Despair. 

Swayed by the changing moon, tides ebb and flow, 

So to thy fickle heart these moods I owe. 



8i 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

Where be thy witcheries now, woman of won- 
derful beauty? 
Priestess of pleasure and love, thy lotus hath 

withered at last. 
Sweet was the soul-searing cult taught by thy 

liberal kisses. 
Sweeter the chalice of love formed by thy 

sensuous mouth. 
Ripe as the rapturing grape, rich as the rose 

in its redness. 
But unto them that did drink fatal as waters 

of death. 
Left unto thee are the dregs, bitter and biting 

as wormwood, 
Freezing the blood in thy veins, leaving thee 

rigid and cold. 

Strange that these lust-loving lips, prodigal once 
with such passion, 
82 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

Wreathe themselves into a smile chaste as a 
maiden's in sleep! 

Ah, how they 've changed since I first crushed 
their voluptuous vintage I 

Shrunk is their soft silken skin, as when the 
tropical sun 

Drinking the life of the grape, leaves it aban- 
doned and shriveled. 

Gibbeted on its own vine, swinging like felon 
forgot. 

Mute is thy murmuring voice, silent its pas- 
sionate pleading, 

Which, like a song of the sea heard in a 
whispering shell. 

Called me so softly to where, rising through 
ravishing roses, 

Love's longed-for heaven appeared, fair as a 
rhapsodist's dream; 

Misted with halos of gold, yet but a vanishing 
splendor 

Miraged in exquisite grace over a desert of 

death. 

83 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

But when the pulses of youth throb with their 

eager insistence, 
When the white snows of the heart melt with 

the breath of the spring, 
Then when the currents of life leap with 

ineffable joyaunce. 
Where is the hand that can point whither their 

waters will wend. 
Whether through vistas of peace, on to Love's 

infinite ocean, 
Or through dark devious ways, seeking the silt 

of the sewer. 

Dead is the light in thine eyes, yet Recollection 

beholds them, 
Beaming with beauty like stars mirrored in 

slumbering seas; 
Where through the darkness they dream, till 

the warm kiss of the morning. 
Or the wild breath of the gale, drowns them 

in wave-woven foam. 



84 



THE DEAD CALYPSO ^ 

Thus when the Roses of Love blushed with 

the Poppies of Passion, 
Crowning our cup of Desire, hid in the draught 

was a charm, 
Which when thy lips fell from mine, sighing 

and sated, would soothe thee 
Into a deep, dreamless swoon where the bright 

violet beams 
Faded away from thine eyes, which in the 

sensuous slumber 
Shone 'neath their uplifted lids white as the 

lilies of Death. 
Moistened with ecstasy's tears were the rapt 

azures when turning 
Into thy love-laden brain, there Passion's secret 

to find; 
Blind were their opaline orbs, on which I 

looked with amazement, 
Till my lips, clinging to thine, coaxed the lost 

irises back. 

Now under curtains of wax, lustreless crescents 

of whiteness, 

85 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

Cold as the frost on the pane, hint of those 

rapturous hours; 
Where is their luminous gleam, which like the 

treacherous beacons 
Lighted by wreckers to lure mariners on to 

their doom, 
O'er Life's unpiloted sea shone with a bale and 

a beauty, 
Till the poor credulous bark dashed on the rock 

of thy heart? 

Springtide of Life when the Soul, hearing 

Love's wakening whisper. 
Glows in the flame that Desire lights in the 

blood to betray! 
Summer that seethes in the veins, purpling 

Lust's grapes for the crushing. 
Which, in a wine-press of Pain, leave the black 

dregs of Despair! 

This I was taught when thy heart, drunk with 
delirious passion, 

86 



,/ 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

Changed to a charnel where lurked ghosts of 

thy deep-buried past, 
Which from their sepulchre stole once in a still 

starless midnight, 
Bearing a chalice, rose-wreathed, drugged with 

the lees of dead loves. 
Draining the perilous draught, swift through 

my pulses the purple 
Rushed while our wet mingling mouths crushed 

the rich raptures that curse; 
Then learned I Lust's lurid lore, whispered by 

thee, whom I worshiped, 
Whom I had deemed half divine, shrined as 

a saint in my heart. 
Oh, how it leaped when thy lips, voicing thy 

vows meretricious. 
Sighed like a girl's whose pure love murmurs 

with virginal bliss! 
Ah, how it bled when they turned, babbling 

in sleep that betrayed them, 
Seeking mine own in the dark, breathing some 

lost lover's name! 

87 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

Swiftly the meshes of silk spun into steel, but 

I lingered, 
Fondling the fetters I feared, fearing to fling 

them away; 
Lost to the lips I had loved, yet with the thirst 

of a drunkard 
Draining the draught that enslaved e'en while 

the spirit recoiled. 
Day after day, as the scales fell from mine eyes, 

I beheld thee 
Garbed in the glamour of Lust, rise from the 

ashes of Love. 
Night after night, though my fears, lulled by 

thy lips, fled like phantoms. 
Soon every sigh that I heard seemed but a hiss 

from the grass ; 
Even thy sob of farewell stifled a laugh when 

I left thee 
Coming at last, dear, to lay Love's chrismal lips 

on thy brow. 

Long, long ago in the past, God's proud and 
white-pinioned angels 

88 



THE DEAD CALYPSO 

Found in the daughters of Earth all that their 

souls could desire; 
Why should I wonder that thou, fairest and 

frailest of women, 
Didst with thy sorceries snare the souls and the 

bodies of men? 

Where are thy worshipers now, they who did 

pant to embrace thee? 
Where is the homage they breathed deep in 

these death-deafened ears? 
Where are the gems and the gold, offered with 

love, that could make thee 
Faithless to him whose cold lips whisper of 

passionless peace? 



89 



GIVE ME THY LIPS 

Give me thy lips, and let me feel 

That they forgiveness grant 
For much that these poor rhymes reveal. 
Give me thy lips, and let me feel 
The raptures that once made me reel, 

That through these verses pant. 
Give me thy lips, and let me feel 

That they forgiveness grant. 



go 



THE DREAM 

On thy white breast that mocks the snow 

Once in a dreaming hour I leaned; 
I felt thy placid pulses glow, 

As from thy modest mouth I gleaned 
The rosy raptures that eclipse 

The joys that waking wooers know, 
And then I laid my fervid lips 

On thy white breast that mocks the snow. 

Oh, how thy heart responsive beat 

With new-born passion's blinding bliss 
That calmed the conscience that would cheat 

And chide me from that glowing kiss! 
O clinging limbs! O yielding breast! 

O lips unlessoned! yet replete 
With passion, yearning to be pressed; 

Oh, how thy heart responsive beat! 



91 



THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE 
THE KING! 

When Villon sang the melted snows, 
The white shroud of a buried year, 

Say, did the traitor winds disclose 
Their hiding-place, or tell him where 
Were laid the dead, the debonair 

Lost women whom he loved to sing? 
No, but they sighed, then answered clear, 

The King is dead, long live the King! 

Why weep the love-surrendered Rose? 

Is faded beauty worth a tear? 
On yonder stem another grows, 

In fresher fragrance hanging there; 

While in the waking breeze we hear 
The love-song of the joyous Spring 

Shouting above old Winter's bier, 
The King is dead, long live the King I 

92 



THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING! 

And thus the cycling measure goes; 

One day fond lips allegiance swear; 
The next the fickle wanton throws 

Her eyes on some new cavalier, 

Who for a season short may wear 
Her favors, in his turn to fling 

Them to the winds for one more fair; 
The King is dead, long live the King! 



ENVOY 

Prince, when you listen to the cheer 
Which through your crowded courts shall ring, 

Remember, thus they '11 hail your heir. 
The King is dead, long live the King! 



93 



THE CRIMSONED GIFT ■, 

If I thy naked spirit could behold, 
As oft thy classic comeliness I've seen, 
Garbed only in its beauty, and I ween 
That Fate to few e'er gave a fairer mould, 
I wonder what the vision would unfold! 

Thy flesh, tho' fair, enshrines a soul whose sheen 
Is radiant too, and though by Love controlled, 
1 Love is divine if it no malice mean. 

Or if thy heart within my hand were laid, 
Brought bleeding to me from thy white wan 
breast. 
And every ruddy drop were voluble 
To answer me; with faith, all unafraid, 
I'd kiss the crimsoned gift, though it confessed 
That which in life it lacked the strength to tell. 



94 



ADIEU D'AMOUR 

Faithful in every fibre of thy heart, 
And all as beautiful as thou art true, 

Yet if it be thy wish that we should part 
Let 's unkiss all our vows and say Adieu. 

The love that glowed so warmly in thy breast 
Is dying slowly, — shall we let it die? — 

Yea, if the flickering flame brings thee unrest, 
My tears shall drown it as I weep Good-by. 

Good-by ? Ah, no I We cannot break the chain ; 

The fetters fused in Passion's crucible 
Are hard to sever; so we must remain 

Bound to each other, though we sigh Farewell. 



95 



ENGLAMOURED 

There's a love that every other love excelleth, 

And its glamour doth outglow the noonday 
sun; 

'T is the faith that with suspicion never 
dwelleth, — 
'Tis the rapture that is reckless to outrun 
The fond hope that every compassed joy sur- 
passes, 
That but lives to realize thy blest embrace; 
They may bid me look on thee through Doubt's 

dark glasses, 
, .But I only see the beauty of thy face. 



96 



HAPPY DAYS 

There is no music like the merry clink 
Of glasses when some fair one's health we drink; 
There is no toast more fitting than the phrase 
My mistress murmurs: it is, "Happy Days I" 

Wet with the wine, her red lips part to show 
Pearls that are whiter than the winter snow; 
The amber beads that glitter in the glass 
Blush crimson as her rose-leaf lips they pass. 

The mirth, the music, and the wit and wine 
With whispered word and kindling kiss combine 
To fan within my heart the flame that lights 
The way from happy days to heavenly nights. 

O Heavenly Nights! An Arctic winter were 
Too short to linger by the side of her. 
Whose lips would make it seem a night in June, 
On whose brief bliss the dawn would break too 
soon. 

97 



LUST'S TIGER TEETH 

But till thy heart is mine and mine is thine, 

All passion will be pale 'twixt thee and me. 

Compare it now with what it then would be, 
That were to liken water unto wine. 
If thou wert fair as she before whose shrine 

A world doth kneel — the foam-born deity — 
And I a god, did not our souls combine, 

Our passion-prompted vows were perjury. 

The brute within the blood may ramp and rave, 
Or fawn and fondle, till the tender tone 
Of Love's soft sigh is counterfeited well; 
But 't is the flesh that for the flesh doth crave, 
Lust's tiger teeth that tear us to the bone, 
To leave us at the last in living hell. 



^ 



WHAT GHOSTS ARE THESE? 

How thy blood-kindling kisses answer mine 
When locked in thy voluptuous limbs I lie! 
How heart to heart and pulse to pulse reply 

And bring the blushes that incarnadine 

Thy velvet cheeks ! How those wet lips of thine 
Murmur to me the soft surrendering sigh, 
That means the moment of our bliss is nigh, 

In which the currents of our love combine! 

Delirious dream! What ghosts are these that stalk 
Into the breathless after-pause to freeze 
The blood that burned and clamored for 
thy charms? 
Dark demons they, who come thy vows to mock, 
And wake imagination till it sees 

Thy beauty panting in another's arms. 

LOFa 



99 



THE SWOON 

I HAVE swooned near to death in those white 
arms of thine, 
Till the trance that enthralled me hath grown 
To a dream where the glories of heaven were 
mine, 
Then have waked on thy bosom to own 
That the seraphs who stroll through the regions 
above 
Never know the rare bliss that I feel 
When I wander with thee where the labyrinths 
of Love 
Their most exquisite raptures reveal. 

I have looked on the stars till my listening ears 

Have been filled with the strains of the blest; 
But my soul a more eloquent harmony hears 

In the dreams that I dream on thy breast; 
'Tis the low blissful beat of a heart that replies 

With a passionate love unto mine; 
'Tis the melody heard in thy murmuring sighs 

When my being is blending with thine. 

100 



THE SWOON 

I have walked where the demons of Sorrow and 
Pain 
Mock the memories of happier days; 
I have drunk the dark dregs of Despair that 
remain 
In the cup of the Love that betrays; 
But thy lips, like the breath of a spring that 
has fled, 
In my heart have awakened once more 
All the glorious dreams of the days that are dead, 
And their peace and their passion restore. 



lOI 



VICTOR LOVE 

Tender, melting lips, distilling 

Love's rich vintage, sweet and rare; 

Trusting, pleading eyes, now filling 
With the bright reproachful tear, 

A sob so sweet, so softly low, 

A breath of heaven, a knell of woe. 

Ah, the murmuring and the sighing. 
And the tumult in each breast! 

Heart to heart is now replying, 
Victor Love is crowned and blest; 

The tyrant sits in Reason's throne. 

And claims the kingdom for his own. 

How he scatters all his treasures 

On his subjects, you and me. 
Golden showers of Passion's pleasures; 

Godlike mortals now are we! 
What care we for the sword of flame 
That bars the gate through which we came! 

102 



VICTOR LOVE 

What, beloved, art thou sobbing, 
Weeping that there 's no return ? 

How thy timid heart is throbbing I 
How thy cheeks with crimson burn 

My kiss shall teach thee to forget, 

And love shall triumph o'er regret. 



103 



WITH CAP AND BELLS 

! With cap and bells, day after day, 
The jester's jolly part I play. 

Yes, "Motley is the only wear," 

The only fabric that will bear 
Time's touch or turn Fate's frown away. 

The wisest in the world are they. 
Earth's laughter-loving ones, who stray 
Along through life from year to year, 

With cap and bells. 

A laugh our sorrow can allay, 

A sigh our merriment can slay; 

Give me the jest that 's not a jeer. 
Give me the smile that 's not a sneer. 

And you may crown me till I 'm gray 

With cap and bells. 



104 



O SINGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS I 

(To Rudyard Kipling) 

When Triton's thrilling trumpet tone 
Sang first across the restless blue, 

From East to West, from zone to zone, 
Such witchery o'er the waves he threw, 
That Orpheus from his lute ne'er drew 

Such music for the rocks and trees, 
As that which o'er the billows flew, 

O Singer of the Seven Seas! 

That sounding shell was shoreward thrown 

To thee by Amphitrite, who 
Now hears across her surges blown 

The wave-worn ballads that she knew 

Long, long ago; but there were few 
She loved to listen to like these 

Which from thy lips come clear and true, 
O Singer of the Seven Seas! 

105 



SINGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS! 

These broad blue tides we call our own, 

Methinks should have another hue, 
For in their deadly deeps is sown 

The flesh of many a fearless crew. 

Though for our Admiralty we strew 
To shore and shark the fullest fees, 

Still, ''Give us more!" the surges sue, 
O Singer of the Seven Seas! 

Not for the "Meteor Flag" alone 

Dost thou all other song eschew; 
We hear the Liner's engines groan. 

We feel the Freighter's "bucking screw"; 

The Derelict drifts past our view, 
Scoffed by the surge, mocked by the breeze. 

Storm-driven, battered and perdu, 
O Singer of the Seven Seas! 

Yet not alone old Ocean's moan 
Thy many measures doth imbue; 

To sing the soldier thou art prone, 
Thy ringing rhymes are a tattoo; 

io6 



SINGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS! 

When Tommy Atkins walks askew, 
Or stands at anything but ease, 

He gets from thee the proper cue, 
O Singer of the Seven Seas! 

Familiar forms again are shown, 
Nor would we from this verse taboo 

The "Rag and Hank of Hair and Bone," 
We knew her well, the shallow shrew. 
And wonder how we came to woo 

And swear our love on bended knees. 
But long ago we said adieu, 

O Singer of the Seven Seas! 

ENVOY 

This somewhat sorry ambigu 

Smacks of the ballade's strict decrees; 
Our Muse dislikes the stern gooroo, 

O Singer of the Seven Seas! 



107 



THE TEARFUL TROTH 

It is a tale that has been often told, 

The story of a love that leaps to life 

And blooms in beauty, though a dark distrust 

Lurks ever near to menace and destroy. 

It is the legend of the love that lives 
Through doubting days and through the har- 
rowing hours 
Of long and lonely nights; the love that dreams 
Of unforgettable and feverish things 
That burn v^ithin the blood and bring again 
The memory of the murmured midnight vow, 
When mutual melting lips were wont to tell 
The thrilling and — perhaps — the tearful troth. 

Ah, fond and fair, low-voiced and lovely-limbed, 
Made of the classic clay that wakens men 
To valorous deeds, or drugs them with desire, 
Until they dream that lust and love arc one — 

io8 



THE TEARFUL TROTH 

From dawn to dark I see thy faultless face, 
And through the night it haunts me, till I feel 
That I could gladly give my life to live 
One brief but blissful hour on thy vv^hite breast. 

The memories of the past cannot outweigh 
My world of present woe; I feel as one 
Who, worn and wearied in a wilderness, 
Wherein no fountain springs or food is found, 
Dreams of the glorious days that once were his,- 
The feast, the flagon, and the flowers and fruit. 
And hears again the mocking melody 
Of one familiar, unforgotten voice. 

So in my dreams I sometimes feel the lips 
That kissed away my cares and chained my soul 
Within a charm that Time can never break. 
Then wake to wonder if I ever steal 
Into thy thoughts as thou dost into mine. 



109 



I LOVE THEE STILL 

I LOVE thee still ; there 's not a day 
That drags its dreary length away, 
From dark December unto June, 
Or winter night, or summer noon, 
But unto thee my fancies stray. 

Poor heralds of my heart are they 
Who would to thee my love convey 

And woo thee with the wearying tune, 

I love thee still. 

Ah, but to feel thy pulses play. 

And once again my head to lay 

On thy white breast! For such a boon. 
Though thou art fickle as the moon. 

My lips would cling to thee and say 

I love thee still. 



110 



WAIFS 

Love's kindest kiss oft to a flame hath fanned 

A latent passion and consumed the best. 

One morn a girl's pure lips to mine were pressed, 
And Ruin's dreaded gulf was rainbow-spanned, 
O'er which we passed into a pleasant land. 

But when that night she wept upon my breast, 
She seemed a love-lost angel on the strand 

Of some strange star, wing-wearied and unblest. 

Not all unhappy, still we drift along, 

Down the wild waters of Love's waif-strewn sea; 
And closer do we cling when others tell 
Of that dark whirlpool in whose eddies strong, 
Frail passion-freighted lovers, such as we. 
Are dragged by undercurrents down to hell. 



Ill 



TO A TREE 

Oft hast thou bent before the gale, 

And heard the tempests 'round thee roar; 
Oft hast thou found their fury fail, 

As down on thee the demons bore; 

They wounded thee in many a war, 
But still thou standest unsubdued. 

To battle with them as before, 
Mute type of Patient Fortitude. 

Though vainly they thy strength assail, 

Of scars they gave thee many a score; 
Though thou art armored with the mail 

That fiercer onslaughts may ignore; 

Still many a limb from thee they tore 
And on the plain their plunder strewed, 

Trophies that Time cannot restore, 
Mute type of Patient Fortitude. 

112 



TO A TREE 

The pleasant pathways of the dale 

Let sighing Strephon still explore; 
Yea, he may have the flowery vale 

And fair-faced Phyllis there adore. 

Thy silent shade to me means more. 
There oft, in melancholy mood, 

I stroll to learn thy saving lore, 
Mute type of Patient Fortitude. 

ENVOY 

To calm blue skies I see thee soar. 
Forgetful of the Borean brood 

Harked on by thunder-throated Thor, 
Mute type of Patient Fortitude. 



"3 



GIVE A BEGGAR A HORSE AND 
HE'LL GALLOP TO HELL 

Give a pauper a purse that is bursting with gold, 
And the meats and the music, the women and 
wine 
You will soon in a profligate pageant behold, 
For he cannot to luxury's limits confine 
The ambition that burns in his blood to out- 
shine 

Even lavish Lucullus, whom none could excel ; 
There is truth in the phrase, there is lore in 
the line, — 

Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. 

He may rot in his rags, he may freeze in the cold. 

He may snore in the sewer, or crib with the kine, 
He may crunch the hard crust that is charity- 
doled. 
He may share, like the prodigal, husks with 

the swine, 
All of poverty's curses may in him combine, 
Till the dogs that licked Lazarus 'gainst him rebel. 

But I say it again, tho' the saying's not mine. 
Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. 

114 



GIVE A BEGGAR A HORSE 

Ah, what pictures the portals of Pluto unfold! 

What diversions the devil delights to design, 
When the clattering hoofs of the courser con- 
trolled 
By the pauper are heard on the easy incline! 
Then Beelzebub doesn't take long to divine 
Who is riding so hard, for he knows the pace 
well, 
And awaits with a welcome most warm and 
condign; 
Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. 

ENVOY 

You must pardon me. Prince, if this envoy 

enshrine 

The sad lady whom Pluto took with him to 

dwell ; 

But to fry in the flame near the fair Proserpine, 

Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. 



"5 



THE CRUST OF CONTENT. 

He who for some great aim hath never sought 
More than Life's stern demands to satisfy 

Climbs closer to the gods, whose needs are naught, 
Than he whose sordid soul doth multiply 
The millions which he vainly dreams will buy 

The calm content that gold hath never bought; 

Crcesus to Solon this confessed when brought, 
Bankrupt and conquered, to the stake to die. 

The crust that balks the wolf may sometimes be 
Sweet as the manna in the wilderness; 
'Tis when the soul forgets the flesh to stray 
Where, in the realm of some harmonious dream, 
It listens to the whispered words that bless, 
And learns the charm that chides the world 
away. 



Ii6 



FROM CRYPT AND CHOIR 

From crypt and choir these rhymes are penned. 
For grief and gladness in them blend; 

There is a cell beneath Song's fane, 

Where many a prisoner of pain 
Hath found the Muse his closest friend. 

Above his couch she comes to bend, 
She teaches him to make and mend 
The psalm he sues her to obtain 

From Crypt and Choir. 

She makes the organ's thunder rend 
His raftered roof; the tones descend 

And flood the dungeon with their strain; 

But unto her he turns to gain 
The calmer chords she loves to lend 

From Crypt and Choir. 



"7 



WE MUST SIT SILENT WHEN THE 
DEVIL DRIVES 

Of all the sayings and the saws we hear, 
The precepts and the proverbs, new or old, 

While many fall like folly on the ear, 

A few are weighted well with Wisdom's gold. 
And oft some philosophic treasure hold; 

Their little homilies guide many lives; 

When over smooth or rocky roadways rolled. 

We must sit silent when the devil drives. 

When through the gloom the lights of home 
appear. 

To welcome us across the wind-swept wold; 
When 'round the blazing hearth we gather near, 

Safe-shielded from the tempest and the cold; 

Then, while some song is sung or story told. 
Fate, from the freezing world without, arrives 

And like a wolf glares on the sheltered fold; 
We must sit silent when the devil drives. 

ii8 



WE MUST SIT SILENT WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES 

The future may be faced without a fear; 
If through the past we have not blindly 
strolled, 
It often lends a light to lead us where, 
Havened in peace, our hearts may be con- 
soled; 
Though Destiny by Fate is oft controlled, 
Yet when the heart upholds the hand that strives. 
Fortune and Fame o'er Failure may be 
scrolled, 
Though we sit silent when the devil drives. 

ENVOY 

Prince, many a man for years has been cajoled 
And buffeted by Fate, yet still survives; 

But till we slumber softly in the mould. 
We must sit silent when the devil drives. 



119 



JOB 

Majestic Mourner! When thy spirit moaned 
Itself to music on thy matchless page, 

When thy great sorrowing soul in anguish 
groaned, 
And when Fate flung to thee her galling gage, 
Oh, what a soul-sustaining heritage 

Was hidden in the fortitude that owned 
How vain and weak it were a war to wage 

With Him, the Lord, who sits in heaven 
enthroned. 

Thy flesh was fed to foulness. Sorrow clad 
Thy soul with sackcloth, and thy forehead 
frowned 
With the black ashes of a heart consumed. 
But through it all, O Man of Uz, thy sad 
But sure philosophy thy trials crowned 
With perfect peace that out of patience 
bloomed. 



120 



THE HIDDEN HAND 

The hidden hand that strikes the mystic chords 
Which wake Love's rapturous and responsive thrill 
In kindred hearts, oft sweeps the sobbing strings 
Of Sorrow, till soul whispers unto soul 
The symphony that chides our tears away 
And turns Grief's midnight to a golden dawn. 



121 



LOVE ME ONCE MORE 

Love me once more. Ah, what have I to do 
With love, or what has love to do with me? 
And yet thy face by day and night I see, 

And with this prayer my soul doth thine pursue. 

Love me once more. 

Love me once more, and it will teach the pen, 
That pleads so feebly to thee on this page, 
To tell lorn lovers, in some after age. 

That love, though dead, may leap to life again. 

Love me once more; for as the hart doth pant 
To drink the water-brooks, I thirst for thee; 
Here, in the waste of life, I bend the knee 

And murmur like a famished mendicant, 

Love me once more. 

122 



LOVE ME ONCE MORE 

Love me once more; and these poor rhymes I 
write 
In thrilling trumpet tones shall sound thy 

name, 
Till it shall echo where the Peaks of Fame 
Are bathed forever in ambrosial light. 

Love me once more. Dost thou no longer heed 
That which had once been life's supremest 

prize? 
And wilt thou now the proffered gift despise 
And turn away to mock me as I plead 

Love me once more? 



123 



THE PROMISED PEACE 

It is the season when we turn again 

The pages of the past and pause to read 

Of One who gave unto the sons of men, 
Long years ago, the best and purest creed 
That ever proved its word in worth and deed; 

And though the tidings to the shepherds told 
Are unfulfilled, again we hear and heed 

The hymn the hosts of heaven sang of old. 
What time from star to star their hallelujahs rolled. 



Now tho' we look with reverence on the past, 

And with fond faith its sacred story tell, 
Yet have the mists of Mammon o'er us cast 
The bane of unbelief, until we dwell 
Within the dark indifference of a spell 
Which Christ himself should come again to 
break; 

124 






THE PROMISED PEACE 

That bard were base as he whose cold kiss 
fell 
Upon the Saviour's cheek, did he forsake 
The truth for fictioned phrase, or with false fingers 
take 

From out the treasured past one grain of gold 
To gild with flattering pen a present pride; 
And for the future, — no man may behold 
And chart the crafty currents of that tide 
Down which it is our destiny to glide 
To where, across Time's trackless waters, roll 
The black and baffling mists of Death that 
hide 
The unknown bourne, which to man's dream- 
ing soul 
Shines ever through the gloom, a hope-created 
goal. 

The promised peace to earth has never come, 
And never will, as long as man shall hear 

The blaring bugle and the muttering drum 
Call him from kith and country on to where 
125 



THE PROMISED PEACE 

The hosts of Greed and Glory skyward rear 
Their crimson-colored banners to his gaze; 

The while the lusts of loot and empire sear 
His soul to selfish ends and sordid ways 
That mock the Star of Peace that did o'er Beth- 
lehem blaze. 

Or worse than War's shrill clarion that wakes 

The sleeping thunder for some foreign foe, 

Is the soul-slaying thirst for gold that slakes 

Its craving where far better blood doth flow. 

No Roman triumph in the past could show 

Captives chained closer to the chariot wheel, 

- Than Mammon's modern conquerors, who 

know 
No creed but gold, whose hearts can never feel 
The peace that passeth all their vaunted vaults 
reveal. 

The flesh is more than raiment, and the life 
Is more than meat; yet we the truth disdain. 

And struggle blindly in a ceaseless strife, 
For what, when won, to ashes oft doth wane. 
126 



THE PROMISED PEACE 

We labor on with hand and heart and brain, 
But at the best we build upon the sand; 

The peace we long for ever doth remain 
Beyond the aching heart and outstretched hand, 
And seems a myth that man may never understand. 

Beneath the burden of the primal curse 
We toil and sweat, but could more bravely 
bend 
And bear the galling yoke, yea, were it worse, 
If we but knew what waits us in the end ; 
Or if we could back through the ages wend 
And hear Pan's reeds, Apollo's peerless lyre, 

See Cytherea from the foam ascend. 
And Hera's eyes blaze with a jealous ire; 
Ah, glorious golden days, what more could man 
desire? 

The gods and myths of Greece have never 

flown 

From field and mountain and from grove 

and stream; 

127 



THE PROMISED PEACE 

They ever live, but we ourselves have grown 
Blind to the beauty of the splendid dream 
That thralled man's senses ere the searching 
beam. 
Of Science shone with rapture-wrecking ray, 

Before the din of dynamo and steam 
Moaned Fancy's dirge and drove us forth to 
stray 
Far from the pictured night into the dreamless day. 

Now, though the fountain of our faith be dry, 
And in Life's waste no cooling stream ap- 
pears, 
Hark! to the chorus rolling through the sky! 
It calls across the desert of the years 
And chides our pagan dreams and skeptic 
sneers. 
For from the lesson of His love we learn 
The faith that falters not, the hope that 
cheers 
Life's darkest hours, and through Him we 
may turn 
Into the path that leads to that for which we yearn. 

128 



TEARS 

Could I but crystallize these midnight tears 
And gather from their beaded bitterness 
A rosary for burning lips to press, 

Some pain-born token of these joyless years 

To teach the faith that saves, the hope that cheers, 
Then would I bid these fountains of distress 
Flow fast and free, if their sad floods could bless, 

Or murmur peace in some poor sufferer's ears. 

Have I not known, O God! — have I not felt 
The benediction of another's verse 

Steal o'er me in the dark and lonely hour? 
Hath it not made my stubborn heart to melt. 
And turned to prayer the deep rebellious curse, 
And soothed my soul to rest with saving 
power? 



129 



JUBILATE DEO 
(A. D. i8q7) 

Righteous Ruler, Royal Lady, throned in 
majesty and splendor. 
Thou, before whose matchless prestige all the 
past and present pale, 
Hear the world-encircling chorus which thy 
many millions render, 
Hear our mighty Jubilate, Sovereign-Queen 
and Empress, Hail! 

While thy white-walled island shaketh with the 
message that is pouring 
From thy thunder-throated warders as they 
tell it to the deep ; 
While the heaven-storming anthem now above 
the clouds is soaring. 
While the bounding heart of Britain doth 
with exultation leap, 
130 



JUBILATE DEO 

All along the seas the echo rolleth till Earth's 
corners listen, 
Mighty marts and commerce-crowded ports 
and rivers hear it swell; 
Lonely islands of the ocean, set in tropic tides 
that glisten 
Into gladness, speed it onward, and the tale of 
triumph tell. 

Where the dawn of new dominion into splendid 
noon is glowing, 
And the bright prophetic legend over Afric 
skies is scrolled; 
Where thy sons the seeds of empire with ambi- 
tious hands are sowing, 
There they think of thee and England, and 
their song is skyward rolled. 

Hark! while India's dusky myriads in their 
many tongues proclaim thee; 
Mighty Empress of the East, three hundred 
millions to thee call; 
131 



JUBILATE DEO 

There from Scinde to far Sadiya, now again we 
hear them name thee, 
Now again their mingling voices ring from 
Gilgit down to Galle. 

Where in unfamiliar beauty Night's bright 
lamps are hung in heaven, 
While the starry crux is dying in the dawn of 
Austral skies, 
There the cannonading chorus flashes forth from 
lips of levin, 
And o'er sunny seas of sapphire on from isle 
to island flies. 

Drowned to-day the mighty music of Niagara's 
falling river. 
Lost in pure Pacific paeans mingling with 
Atlantic's roar; 
Mountain, field, and lake are listening, into life 
the forests quiver. 
For they hear Vancouver calling unto lonely 
Labrador. 

132 



JUBILATE DEO 

Many a bivouac and barrack hear the reveille 
rejoicing, 
Many a citadel and fortress frowning over 
foreign foam, 
Know the music of that bugle, and with tongues 
of thunder voicing 
Forth a great lo Triumphe, roll an answer- 
ing message home. 

Where the sheltering flag of England over land 
and sea is streaming, 
Where beneath a foreign banner British hearts 
beat quick with pride, 
Where across the trackless waters England's 
ships are swiftly steaming. 
Where her barks with tempests battle, or at 
anchor safely ride, 

There thy liegemen now salute thee, for wher- 
ever they may wander, 
'Neath that flag is always England, but to-day 
it is a shrine 

133 



JUBILATE DEO 

Where they kneel and on her thousand years of 
matchless glory ponder, 
Rising never to forget the brightest of them 
all are thine. 

Where the home and hearth are sacred, yea, 
wherever women glory 
In the virtue that men value, where in every 
land they dwell 
For long years they've learnt to love and linger 
o'er thy stainless story. 
And a world of women's voices of another 
empire tell. 

Golden mists of sixty summers melt and we 
again behold thee. 
Maiden-monarch, sceptred, symboled, throned 
and crowned as England's Queen; 
There the promise of the present with its glory 
aureoled thee. 
While the ancient Abbey's arches never bent 
o'er grander scene. 
134 



JUBILATE DEO 

Then we see thee wife and mother, tranquil days 
of joy whose fleetness 
Grandeur, glory, power, and prestige could 
not for a moment stay; 
Days that dawned in peace and compassed every 
rare domestic sweetness. 
Till a life-enshrouding shadow fell across thy 
cloudless way. 

From thy lips the lurking Spoiler dashed the cup 
of all thy gladness, — 
O ye Mountains of Gilboa! tears were then 
your dews and rain; 
Then from Dan to Beersheba all the land was 
filled with sadness. 
For our grief with thine was mingled when 
thy lofty mate was slain. 

Ah, we miss thy minstrel Merlin, who with swift 
unfaltering fingers 
Taught the sounding Harp of England 
Honor's hymn and Sorrow's tale; 
135 



JUBILATE DEO 

Over many a song immortal, sung to thee, how 
Memory lingers, 
Till we almost hear his voice and see the guid- 
ing Gleam and Grail! 

Nay, the Gleam is ever with us ; thou for sixty 
years hast worn it, 
'T is the guiding light of England, Glory's 
star and Honor's ray; 
On thy forehead now it resteth, Truth and 
Righteousness adorn it. 
And it still shall lead us onward, as it lights 
our path to-day. 

Now tho' Court and Camp and Cloister, Art 
and Song around thee cluster, 
Till the glory that enfolds thee seemeth more 
of heaven than earth. 
Yet it cannot for one moment blind us to the 
brighter lustre 
Of the the faith that never faltered, of the 
woman's splendid worth. 
136 



JUBILATE DEO 

Though with triumph and with pageant and 
with paean we extol thee, 
As we lift thee and enthrone thee on the height 
of England's fame, 
Yet thy three-times-twenty years of blameless 
womanhood enroll thee 
With a halo that outshineth all thy gemmed 
tiara's flame. 

Now unto the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, 
the God of Nations, 
On whose Truth for strength and wisdom 
thou with fearless faith dost lean. 
While the prayer and psalm are mingling with 
an Empire's acclamations. 
Unto Him we do commend thee, Sovereign 
Lady, Empress, Queen! 



137 



WEARY 

Not as a means of grace 

And hope of glory, — No. 
But could I see Thy face 
And hear the blessing flow, 
As when Thy living lips the promise poured, 
Then would I kneel and wait for mercy, Lord. 

Ye weary, come to me 

And I will give ye rest. 
Have I not bent the knee 
And all my soul confessed? 
Art thou a myth, O God, or am I blind, 
Groping in gloom for peace I cannot find. 

Oh, shed one beam of light. 
And when my flesh is wrung 

Through agony's long night. 
When all my life is hung 
138 



WEARY 

On Retrospection's cross, and when the spear 
Of Conscience strikes my soul, then be Thou near. 

Whisper one word of hope, 

That my faint heart may know 
How with these fears to cope, 
And respite gain from woe ; 
Bind up my wounds and breathe the healing balm 
Of one kind word, to comfort and to calm. 

Not for a heaven unearned. 

Nor to escape a hell. 
My lips have often burned 
To drink of Mercy's well; 
Yearning in that sweet flood themselves to steep, 
And drift away from life in dreamless sleep. 



139 



TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 

Supreme Unknown, whom yet we trace 
But dimly through a darkened glass, 
When shall the mists that hide Thee pass, 

And we behold thee face to face? 

For countless ages we have trod 
The lower trails that lead to Thee, 
Now on the distant heights we see 

The banners of the hosts of God. 

A thousand gods have we confessed. 
And warped our worship age by age, 
Creed blotting creed from off the page. 

An ever-changing palimpsest. 

Long through the gloom Thy skies we scanned; 

We cried to Thee, but Thou wert dumb; 

Yet Faith oft heard a whispered "Come," 
And Fancy felt a guiding hand. 

140 



TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 

Confirming our audacious guess, 

Thy lightnings clove the clouds and seemed 
To write amen to all we dreamed, 

Thy crashing thunders answered "Yes." 

Altars and fanes to Thee we raised, 
Built on one vague but constant hope 
That taught us through the gloom to grope, 

While on the silent stars we gazed. 

For Thee we searched the skies, then turned 
The glass upon the atom, till 
We saw the life within it thrill 

To clasp the mightiest star that burned. 

Life yearning unto life, the spark 
Within the seed that bursts the sod 
Claims kindred with the unknown God, 

But never leaps the bridgeless dark. 

Hope crying in the gloom, a child 
Amid strange lights and shadows lost, 
'Twixt doubt and fear perplexed and tossed, 

By any whispered word beguiled. 

141 



TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 

Unfaltering faith may seek to tear 
And sweep the baffling veil aside; 
We know not if the dead deride 

Her efforts, but the living hear 

Death laughing ever at her creed, 
Blighting each promise ere it bloom. 
Till all the past seems but a tomb. 

And every hope a broken reed. 

A tomb! a broken reed I Ah no! 
We die, but dying leave behind 
That which may teach us yet to find 

Where Life's immortal waters flow. 

A thousand ages yet unborn, 

Pregnant with promises that cast 
Their beams before, may bring at last 

The birth-blaze of the coming morn. 

Within the growing light we fade 
With all the things of yesterday 
That swift-paced Progress flings away, 

Or Science scoffs into the shade. 
142 



TO THE UNKNOWN GOD 

Or as the scattered fragments fly 
Beneath the Builder's hand, so we 
Fall from the fabric that shall be 

A temple lifted to the sky. 

Or is it Babel that we build 
Age after age upon our dead? 
And is our faith a fiction fed 

On dreams as vain as those that filled 

The sons of Noah when they toiled 
And piled the tower on Shinar's plain? 
Oh! is the hope we cherish vain, 

And at the last shall we be foiled ? 

Nay, when far future years have passed, 
Our lives shall not have been for naught, 
For out of bleak oblivion brought, 

We shall behold Thy face at last. 



143 



THE CROSS - CROWNED CAIRN 

A WHISPERED prayer, a stone with reverent hand 

Laid near a cross that on a cairn doth stand, 

This and no more ; no fragrant buds to wreathe 

A garland for the silent dead beneath; 

No requiem rolling on the desert air 

To guide us to the lonely sleeper there; 

No rudely written legend to proclaim 

His birth, his death, his country, age or name. 

Yet never vault, from dark Machpelah's cave, 
Where Israel's primal patriarch found a grave; 
Nor yet the dome that Artemisia raised 
O'er Caria's king, at which a world amazed 
In wonder stood; nor Ghizeh's gloomy pile, 
Housing the haughtiest Pharaoh by the Nile, 
Nor sacred shrine, nor quiet cloistered fane. 
Whose gloomy crypts Earth's proudest dust 

contain, 
E'er sent a softer slumber than these stones 
Which shelter from the sun a wanderer's bones. 

144 



THE CROSS-CROWNED CAIRN 

The prayers we pray, our dirges of distress, 
'Neath carven arch, or in the wilderness, 
What are they to the dead ? Oh, who can say 
Where the dread Spoiler pauses, if the clay 
Alone surrenders to his blighting breath, 
Or, whether down the sombre stream of Death, 
The spirit, drifting into darkness, dies 
As did this flesh beneath these scorching skies? 

It is not so; the Symbol that doth keep 
Its lonely vigil on yon stony heap 
Is eloquent, and tells of Him who first 
Through Death's unbroken barriers did burst. 
Of Him on whom a world has learnt to lean, 
And from the darkest hours of grief to glean 
The Hope that helps when other comforts fail, 
The Faith that falters not before the veil, 
The Love that prays in every Christian land, 
When in the presence of the dead we stand, 
That though the dreamless dust may never wake. 
The soul may somewhere see the morning break. 



145 



CONSOLATION 

A SOB of sorrow sounding through the strings 

As Recollection ponders on the past; 
Is this the only solace Memory brings 

To soothe a soul that shivers in the blast? 

How soon the feast was followed by the fast! 
How quick the fruits and flowers turned to dust! 

How swift the waters sped on which I cast 
The bread of life, that cometh back a crust! 

A crust? Ah, no! Though barren is the shore 
Of that once tempting tide whose waters hold 
The dreams of youth that in their depths 
were drowned, ' 

Not fruitless is the flood; its waves restore 
What Folly flung to them a thousand-fold. 
When on the strand some pearl of song is 
found. 



146 



THE CAVERN OF GLOOM 

Come, throw those white arms of thine, dear, 
around me, pillow thy fair fervid cheek 
on my breast, 

Listen again to a story of sorrow, learn how the 
loneliest heart may be blest. 

Welcome awaits thee whenever thou comest, 
morning or eventide, midnight or noon, 

Or when the tempests of winter are wailing, or 
when the faint fragrant breezes of June 

Murmur their vesper o'er verdurous meadows, 
soothing to slumber the birds and the 
flowers. 

Then, when the gloom gathers deeper and 
darker, hearken to me through the harrow- 
ing hours. 

Once so familiar, but now all forgotten, faded 

and lost in a Faith that defies 
All that Despair in the dark ever dreaded, all 

that Grief glared at with slumberless eyes 
147 



THE CAVERN OF GLOOM 

Aching for day that but dawned to deride me, 
longing for night ere to noon it had grown, 

Thus, through the years and their varying 
seasons, reaping the whirlwind, I lingered 
alone. 

Vain as the vanishing fabrics that Fancy builds 
in a waterless waste to betray, 

So in Life's desert the phantoms I followed, 
mirage-like, mocked me, then faded away; 

Onward I went till the bird-song was silent, 
dry ever}?^ fountain and dead every bloom, 

Footsore and weary, for peace ever panting, 
came I at last to the Cavern of Gloom. 

Cold as a charnel and black as Cimmerian 
midnight the goal of my destiny seemed. 

Little I thought that its sombre surroundings 
meant the dark durance that 's never re- 
deemed. 

148 



THE CAVERN OF GLOOM 

Meant what the strongest would shrink to 
encounter, — yea, what the bravest would 
fly from in fear, 

Should the curse come like a bolt that 's death- 
freighted, thundering from skies that are 
silent and clear; 

But the grim harvest that Grief weeps to garner. 
Fate whispered warningly to me when Life 

Leaps in the pulses and laughs at the future, 
strolling where Hebe's red roses are rife. 

Fancy oft smiled through the shades of my 
prison, breathing the words that were sweet 
to my soul ; 

Oft through the darkness, all weaponed to 
wound me. Pain with his merciless myr- 
midons stole; 

Racked me and flayed me and tore me with 
torture, till near the last this great lesson 
I learned, — 

149 



THE CAVERN OF GLOOM 

Misery's midnight may glow with a glory, 
flooding the Cavern of Gloom till it's 
turned 

Into a temple that soars to the heavens, reaching 

a region of infinite calm. 
Where sacred strains of ineffable sweetness roll 

from an organ and blend with a psalm 

Crooned as a slumber-song soothing to sorrow, 
sung as a blessed placebo to pain 

By the clear voices of white-pinioned seraphs 
sent through the shadows my soul to sustain. 



ISO 



THE VANISHED VINTAGE. 

When the hopes that we cherish, the dreams that 
we dream, 

And the joys that defraud us are dead; 
When the Past only mocks us and never a beam 

From the close-curtained Future is shed; 
When we falter and fall, as we grope in the gloom, 

And our feet with the thistles are torn, 
When the cankers of Conscience begin to consume. 

Do we over our misery mourn? 

Yea, we weep as we think of the vintage we crushed 

From the rich ruddy grapes of the Past; 
And we dream in the dark of the faces that flushed 

With a beauty that mocked at the blast; 
Through the long lonely night and the desolate day, 

When our folly and fate we deplore. 
Oft the ghosts of dead pleasures stalk by us and say, 

If you could you would do as before? 



isi 



ATAXIA 

My world has shrunk at last to this small 
room, 
Where like a prisoner I must now remain. 
I'd rather be a captive in the gloom 

Of some deep dungeon, tearing at my chain, 
For then, perchance, my freedom I might 
gain. 
Ah God! to think that I must languish here. 
Shackled by sickness and subdued by pain. 
To die a living death from year to year, 
Joy banished from my breast and Sorrow brooding 
there ! 

Yet these familiar walls do sometimes fade. 
Then my faint eyes on fair horizons rest; 

By Memory's distant lights I am betrayed. 
And Hope a moment flutters in my breast. 
Till I forget that I am all unblest. 

152 



ATAXIA 

Unfettered fancy wanders far away 

To where the lips I loved and often pressed 
Seem mine once more, and make my pulses 
play 
Anew with youth's wild heat and half revive this 
clay. 

I often think how once these stumbling feet, 
That now can scarcely bear me to my bed, 
Were swift to follow, as the wind is fleet. 
The baleful beam that to destruction led; 
Nor paused I till the lurid light had fled. 
Till on mine ears there broke the dismal roar 
Of that black stream whose waters wail the 
dead; 
Dumb with despair I stood, and from that 
shore 
Saw Charon's ghostly craft and heard his doleful oar. 

Thou domineering power, or Love, or Lust, 

Or Passion, or whatever else thou art. 
Though thy red roses now are naught but dust, 

153 



ATAXIA 

What splendid spectres from their ashes 

start! 
What hunger they awaken in the heart! 
What fever in the blood! And in the brain 
What dreams they build when day's dull 
hours depart, 
And Slumber drives away the demon Pain, 
And loosens from my limbs this curst ataxic chain! 

Then Memory wakes and through the dark- 
ness flies 
Afar to where the golden past appears, 
And lingers there to listen to the sighs 
A boy is breathing in a wanton's ears. 
Her lips taught his the burning kiss that 
sears 
The heart 'gainst love, but lights the lust that 
leaves, 
Or soon or late, an aftermath of tears. 
When, in the waste of life, the sower grieves 
To gather from the gale his dead and withered 
sheaves. 

154 



ATAXIA 

I shrined her as a saint within the heart, 
'Gainst which her own had leaped a thou- 
sand times; 
But Fate stepped in and tore our lips apart, 
And drove me in despair to distant climes. 
Long years have passed since then, but could 
these rhymes 
Bring back that leman and those dreamed-of 
days. 
Their strains should soar to where celestial 
chimes 
Blend with seraphic hymns of ceaseless praise. 
And from the dead, cold past that matchless minion 
raise. 

Had Time but halted for us as the sun 

Stood still on Gibeon while Joshua strove! 
Ah no, the silver moon of Ajalon 

Would have looked kindlier on those nights 

of lovel 
Little cared we for sun or moon above. 
Or for the gems upon the black-browed night, 

155 



ATAXIA 

We may have seen them through the 
heavens move, 
But recked not, thought not of their wheeling 
flight. 
Blinded, poor love-sick fools, by Passion's daz- 
zling light. 

Oft in that light's fast-fading afterglow 

Her visioned presence unto me appears; 
And as I first beheld her long ago. 
The same alluring loveliness she wears; 
Oft in the midnight Recollection hears 
A sweeter plaint than Pandion's daughter's 
strain 
Murmured by lips that kiss away my tears, 
While in my dreams I clasp her form again. 
Then wake with outstretched arms, to find the 
vision vain. 

Amongst a legion of lost loves her face, 
Through Memory's mists, seems fairest of 
them all. 

156 



ATAXIA 

Though heaven was mine when locked in her 
embrace, 
Yet there were others, whom I oft recall. 
Who wove Lust's purple threads through 
this dark pall 
Long years ago in Passion's panting loom, 
Before Life's honeyed cup had turned to 

gall, 
Or yet the day had deepened to the gloom 

That wraps me like a shroud within this living 

tomb. 

O Marah! Marah! as thy bitter stream 

Was turned to sweetness by the magic tree, 
So the dark current of my years doth seem 
To flow at times in murmuring melody; 
'T is when, dear Lyric Maid, I turn to 
thee; 
Then the light laughing loves of other days 

Hide their false faces, or like shadows flee; 
Oft had I fallen in these cheerless ways, 
But heard thy whispered words that rescue and 
upraise. 

157 



ATAXIA 

Now tho' these limbs are cold and almost dead, 

And torture runs through every sluggish vein, 
Yet is endurance out of suffering bred. 

And fortitude to triumph over pain; 

The wasted body shrinks, but still the brain 
Urges the palsied hand along the sheet, 

On which, alas! tears sometimes fall like rain; 
But Fancy even Misery can cheat, 
And in the pain-born rhyme oft find a refuge sweet 

But even there, the Spoiler with his scythe 
Torments the wasted sheaf he waits to reap ; 

His torturing reminders make me writhe, 
Till, mad with pain, I beg the final sweep 
That surely soon must come to give me sleep 

Still one retreat is left, to which I flee; 1 

Dear dreamy draught! in which I often steep " 

Senses and soul, I turn again to thee. 
And drift down Lethe's stream out on Oblivion's sea 



i 



IS8 



THE LOOM 

A WEARIED weaver at the loom, I gaze 

On that which I have woven till mine eyes 
Grow dim to see the fabric it displays, — 

The warp of all my work seems woofed with 
sighs. 

No more for me Life's shuttle swiftly flies, 
But falters feebly through the fibred maze. 

As thread on thread it slowly multiplies. 
Weaving, alas! a weft of dreary days. 

For in the woven meshes there appears 
The sombre shade of Sorrow. Do I weave 
But sackcloth for my soul ? And am I now 
But one who gloats upon the garb he wears. 
Who in the shadow sits apart to grieve. 
The ashes of his life upon his brow? 



159 



SOME PRESS NOTICES OF POEMS BY LOUIS ALEXANDER 
ROBERTSON. 

Could I but make explanation of the term sufficiently comprehen- 
sible, I would readily elect to call Robertson the poet a Greek. By 
so denominating him, I would aim to express in a word the dominant 
note of sensuous classicism that pervades his singing. There is in it 
a throbbing vitality, a fearless exaltation of the body urged through 
the very adoration of the mystery of creation. A handling less purely 
classic would put such verses beyond the pale. 

In all his work exalted spirit and suspension of the clear note from 
beginning to end make beauty in the lines. Robertson's mechanics of 
verse structure are of such high order of perfection as to induce the 
effect of spontaneity. No ticking of the metrical rote machine interferes 
to mar the harmony between thought and sound. — San Francisco Call. 

Louis A. Robertson's book, "The Dead Calypso," made him a 
singer of national note. — New York World. 

A notable feature of the work of this poet is the near approach to 
perfection of his poetry. — Buffalo Courier. 

Some of Robertson's sonnets are equal to the best in the English 
language. — San Francisco Bulletin. 

The collection throughout shows the hand of a master, and is sure 
to be welcomed as a real contribution to the poetic literature of our 
country. — Trenton Times. 

The melody of the verse is as notable as the warmth of its fancy. — 
New York Times. 

His work has fire and grit in it; it has also much tenderness and 
sadness. It runs the gamut from the most spiritual aspiration to the 
rage of desire defeated in satiety. In the matter of form all the 
verses are exquisitely done; in the matter of feeling the intensity is 
poignant; always the song has color to it, — has blood and bone and 
flesh woven through it. — St. Louis Mirror. 

There are poems in this volume of noble range. Robertson is cer- 
tainly a purist, and has a thorough knowledge of the technique of 
poetry. He is never guilty of a false quantity, nor does he ever lower 
the tone from its original setting. He is one of the few poets of the 
day whose work can be read more than once. — San Francisco Post. 

Robertson's lines reveal the faculty of making the old mythology 
real. Like Keats, he fuses his thought into an imaginative glow 
that makes the fables of Greece and Rome live again for us of these 
prosaic days. Those who feel the sway of his passion will recognize 
the hand of a master. — San Francisco Chronicle. 



MAY 1 1907 



LIBRARY OF 




